


Jerrymandering

by XFilesinAMajor



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 13:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 68,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21356668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XFilesinAMajor/pseuds/XFilesinAMajor
Summary: In Dimension K-16-R, three months before the Federation took over Earth, the Smiths went to a block party--and Jerry met a woman named Celia. Neither of them expected it to amount to anything, until Beth decided to kick him out and he realized he had nowhere left to turn.And then in Part Two, shit really goes off the rails. But you've got to make it through the conventional stuff first. Sorry.
Relationships: Jerry Smith/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	1. ONE

I'd never really been to a block party before, and so far I was seriously doubting I'd ever attend one again. My friend Jill had convinced me to come along, because she'd just moved into the neighborhood and didn't know anyone. “Isn't that the point of a block party?” I'd asked dubiously when we discussed it. “To meet people?”

“Maybe it is...and maybe you need that even more than I do,” she'd countered.

And she had a point there, because I hadn't been on a date in over a year. I'd always thought if I wound up single again, someday, somehow, I'd enjoy the experience of going on dates and having sex with people I just met, but the reality of being a single mom in the modern era was a lot more tinder and disappointment and a lot less meet-cute.

Lots of awkwardness, too. I was good at awkwardness.

Currently my kids were off playing with Jill's kids in the nice suburban neighborhood that wasn't mine, and I was floating from person to person making forced conversation or listening in silence. You'd think, given she didn't want to be here alone her new neighbors, Jill would have been clinging to my side. But she'd started up a chat with a few other moms about hair products; I'd wandered off from boredom half an hour ago, and she had yet to come looking for me.

“This party's terrible,” said an older guy from a lawn chair to my left. I glanced over in surprise to see if he was talking to me. He burped, and I tried not to cringe. Bodily functions are all perfectly entertaining in the right situation, but not generally the best way to introduce yourself to someone.

“I wouldn't know,” I said politely. “I haven't been to many like this.”

“Yeah, because—” He burped again, and continued speaking without pause. “It sucks. If I was throwing this party, I'd do things differently.”

Judging from the smell of his burps, his parties would involve a lot more alcohol. I smiled again, but this time it might have been closer to a smirk. “I somehow doubt yours would be as kid-friendly, though.”

“Shows what you know,” he retorted without malice. “I'm great with kids. In fact I, I'm great at everything. I'm a genius. I'm brilliant.”

“Nice to meet you, Brilliant,” I said, wondering why I was bothering even as I spoke. “I'm Celia.”

He looked me over skeptically. “Was that supposed to be a _joke_?”

I smiled slightly, both embarrassed and pleased with myself. “Well, it's a dad joke, so barely.”

The guy rolled his eyes. “You should go talk Jerry instead,” he told me, gesturing vaguely toward the backyard with his hand. “He's more your speed.” He belched, loudly.

“Who's Jerry?” I asked, trying to figure out which of the men milling around in that direction might be the one he meant.

“My idiot son-in-law,” he said, misinterpreting the question. “He's a loser. I wouldn't pay any more attention to him than most people do to Africa.”

Based on this interaction, I was inclined to agree that anyone this guy didn't like was probably going to be a lot nicer to talk to. “Well, you just said he was more my speed,” I retorted, trying to hide my irritation, “so I'm going to go talk to _him_.” If he appreciated dad jokes, he'd already be an improvement. “Care to be any more specific?”

“The unemployed jackass who for some reason my daughter hasn't divorced yet. Oh, you, you mean which one is he. You mean you can't tell just by looking at him? He's wearing a, a, a stupid golf shirt.” 

“Thanks,” I said tartly, and took my leave. Once I rounded the corner of the house, I spotted a relatively cute guy about my own age who I hadn't noticed before. He was leaning against the side of the building, looking at his phone. He glanced up as I was still studying him, wondering whether I should say hello, and I looked hurriedly away before hesitantly looking back and smiling.

“Uh, hi,” he said with a timid wave. “You're, uh, you were looking at me pretty intensely there.”

I blushed. “Sorry. I was just...are you Jerry?”

He blinked. “Yeah, I'm Jerry.” Looking confused and a little nervous, he added, “Why?”

I grimaced. “I know, terrible introduction. I was talking to this older guy who didn't laugh at my dad jokes, and he got bored with me and said you'd be more my speed. I don't know anyone here, so I figured, why not find out?”

He relaxed slightly at the explanation. He _was _wearing a golf shirt, but I didn't see anything wrong with it. On the contrary, the collar and the olive coloring drew my attention to a fairly comfortable dad-bod and warm hazel eyes. I wondered whether the old drunk had been accurate in his implication that his daughter might divorce this guy, or if that was just wishful thinking. (On his part, or on mine?)

“Crazy hair?” Jerry asked. “Wearing a lab coat even though it's hot out?”

I nodded. “He's...weird.”

“Yeah, he's pretty...odd,” Jerry agreed after a beat. His expression darkened, and he added in almost an undertone, “And that's just the beginning.” Whatever was on his mind in that moment, he shook it off and offered me a smile. “But tell me about yourself!”

I somehow had not expected this sort of question, and fumbled it. “Oh, I'm just...” I felt my cheeks start to heat with a blush, and that only made me feel more painfully awkward. “I'm...” I coughed and started over, trying to force the blush down. “I'm Celia. Hi. I tell lame jokes and get awkward. How are you?”

“Well hello, Celia.” He had a really nice smile. My heart fluttered slightly. _Married_, I reminded myself. “I'm Jerry...” he paused, and seemed to blush a tiny bit, too. “Uh, I might have said that already...um. I used to be in advertising. I had a campaign for apples that, uh, well....it went...okay. Sort of.”

“Really?” I was impressed by this, though if I was truly honest it was more his verbal stumbling that won me over. It was very charming, in a nervous sort of way. “Good for you,” I told him with feeling. “How do you even market apples? I mean, they're..._apples_.” You ate them. They crunched and went in pies. The end.

“It was tough,” Jerry nodded. He seemed encouraged by my enthusiasm. “Ah, yeah, um. I figured they're food, and people are hungry, so they should be 'hungry for apples.'”

I laughed delightedly. “I love it! That's probably the only time I'd eat an apple. If I was really hungry. Er.” I paused, wondering if that would actually sound like a compliment to a stranger. “I'm not much of a fruit person. So I'd have to be...you know. Hungry.”

“Yeah...” he nodded, and there was a beat of silence as we both searched for a way to expand on this conversation in a way that normal people would converse. I wasn't very good at it, at least not when I was actually interested in the person I was talking to and attempting to be myself. It seemed as though Jerry was in the same boat.

“Well, it's better than I would have come up with, anyway,” I reiterated with gusto. “I actually kind of want an apple now, and that's saying something. So...um...what are you doing with yourself now?”

This must have been the wrong question, damn it. He touched his collar and looked uncomfortable. “I'm, uh, well...kind of between jobs right now. Um, advertising just wasn't for me.” He averted his eyes from me, looking unhappy as he stared at the grass.

I felt a subtle need to hug him twang inside me, like a poorly plucked guitar string. “Hey, that's alright,” I told him with a smile, “I'm sure there's lots of other stuff you can do.”

“I'm sure there is!” His responding smile seemed a little forced, but it was better than nothing. “But I get to spend more time with my kids and, uh, my father-in-law.” The thought made him look glum again, but he fought on. “Uh, sometimes we go on day trips.”

“Ha, that's so funny,” I told him with a genuine chuckle, “I was about to ask how you were spending your time while you're home! That sounds fun.”

“Well, sometimes it's like they can't wait to get rid of me...” He didn't look thrilled about the idea, and I had no idea how to respond to it. “But that's okay!” he assured me—or maybe himself. “That's...that's okay.” If he was trying to convince himself with the repetition, it didn't seem to be working. He glanced unhappily at the grass again, and I felt another amateur guitar chord strum inside me.

“Um.” I cleared my throat. “That sounds nice, I guess? I mean, the time with your kids. Are you, um, are you married, then?” I instantly hated myself for asking it, because it carried all sorts of implication and interest I hadn't intended to convey. I'd only _meant _to ask because he'd mentioned taking trips, and kids, but not the wife. Instead, it came out sounding—at least to my ears—like a declaration of interest.

“Yes,” he answered at once, and even though he didn't look thrilled with the subject I still cringed internally. “My wife, Beth, and I, we, uh...we met in high school. She works with horses.”

“Oh, wow,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “That's...wow, that's a long time. You must be really lucky.” I forced a smile.

“Yes,” Jerry said again, with enthusiasm that felt completely insincere. “It's...great. Everything's great!” His smile looked more like a cringe. But I didn't know him well. Maybe he was genuinely happy. I leaned into the wall opposite him. It was pleasantly shady there, and it seemed like we were going to be talking long enough I might as well get comfortable.

“So,” I said, and realized I didn't have the first clue how to respond to his last statement. “You said you go on trips with your kids? How old are they?”

The change of subject must have caught him off-guard, because he blinked and hesitated. “Kids? Oh, right, um...they're teenagers, actually. Sixteen and fourteen. My daughter doesn't have much time for me, honestly.”

He was old enough to have teenage kids? He certainly didn't _look_ any older than me. Was he actually in his forties, or had they just started young? I couldn't think of any polite way to ask that, though, so instead I said “So what's your son like, then?”

“Morty? He's, um...he's a special kid.” He said it with affection, leaving me wondering what sort of special he meant. “Likes hanging out with his grandfather.”

“The guy I met earlier?” I asked, for clarification.

Jerry nodded, looking displeased with the thought. “Rick. He lives with us and, um, works out of our garage. He seems to like spending time with Morty, anyway.”

_But not me_, was the silent implication there. I scrunched my face up in sympathy. “Well that's really sweet. It's nice of you to let him stay with you so they can have that time together.” I paused thoughtfully. “I know teenagers can be pretty tough.”

“Nice?” He repeated my word back to me, looking strangely blank. “Yeah...”

“Yeah!” Now it was my turn to repeat him. Damn, we were both failing at basic conversation. I gave him an encouraging smile to make up for it. “I mean, I don't know if I'd want my in-laws living with me. You must be a sweetie.”

He stared at me for long enough that I shifted awkwardly. The movement must have made him realize what he was doing, and he recovered quickly. “Th...thanks! It can be tough.” He looked a bit happier as he spoke, so I stayed with the theme.

“I can only imagine. What did you look so surprised for? You never hear that?”

He stared at his shoes. “Um, no, not...not really.”

More guitar chords inside me. It was turning into a really poorly played ballad in there. “Ohmygod, that's terrible! Everyone needs to feel appreciated for what they do.” I made a face of sympathetic sorrow on his behalf.

“Yeah, that'd be nice,” Jerry sighed. “But not everyone appreciates it...” He stared at his shoes some more. “In fact, basically no one does.”

“I bet you do a ton of stuff they don't even notice, don't you?” I asked indignantly, and he nodded dejectedly. “Gah, that's kids for you...it _is _just the...the kid, righ...” He didn't seem inclined to answer, but I didn't need him to. “You said no one. Fuck. That's just...that's fucked up, I'm sorry.” The little orchestra in my heart was going nuts. “Do you, um...” How did you do this with someone you'd just met? “Can I give you a hug?”

He hesitated, and looked over his shoulder. There was no one else immediately in view, but that didn't seem to reassure him. “I...I don't know if...” His voice cracked, and I realized he really _needed _a hug. “...Beth would like that or not...but, um...” His voice cracked again, and it was all I could do not to fling my arms around him and invite him to cry into my shoulder. “Uh, okay.”

With an uncertain sigh of relief, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He melted into it, and I tightened my embrace. It felt good. “It's a _hug_, Jerry,” I told him as I smoothed the fabric of his shirt under my thumb. “If you can't get a hug, I think she has some issues. I'm not going to try to...” Abruptly, I stopped myself, realizing the danger in the not-joke I'd been about to make. “You know, let's not go there. You need need a hug. You _deserve_ a damn hug.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, bringing his own arms around the small of my back and returning the hug. “Um...yeah...” He almost sighed the word, like a back-massage sigh, or a bedroom-sigh. Had _my _breathing just gotten faster, or had his? “Yeah,” he repeated, sounding like he was enjoying this almost too much. Yet I didn't step back. “Mmm...” Suddenly, _he _stepped back, reestablishing personal space between us. He looked thoroughly embarrassed. “I mean, uh, thank you! Yes, thank you.”

There was an awkward silence, and I knew in that moment that _both _of us had enjoyed the embrace a little more than was appropriate. “You. Ah.” I blushed. “You give good hugs.”

“I do?” He sounded surprised, nervous, but pleased. “I mean...really?” He thumped his chest, coughed, deepened his voice with confidence. “I mean, yes, I do!” Uncertainty and something else slipped in as he added “I give other good things, too. I mean! Uh...”

Heavy silence. _Weighted_ silence.

I went in for another hug. It was probably the absolute wrong thing to do, but I wanted to. He hugged me back more firmly and more quickly this time, and my heartbeat quickened. “Yes, you do,” I assured him. “Also, you smell nice. Kinda manly. I like it.” I bit my lip to stop myself saying anything else, and wished I had the willpower to step backward. “But, uh. I never said that. Because, um. Your wife. Yeah.”

I couldn't see his face, but I felt the sudden stillness through his body, as close as it was to mine in that moment. “We...we shouldn't...”

I nodded, and forced myself to let go of him. “Your wife,” I repeated, bobbing my head in understanding. But I couldn't just leave it at that. “She should really appreciate you more.”

Jerry smiled shyly. “She should, shouldn't she,” he agreed. He sounded happier again, more certain. Like he meant it.

I was still nodding like a bobblehead. “She really should.”

He leaned in like he was going to kiss me.

I leaned back, heart thumping wildly, and he stopped when he was inches from my face and looked at me. “Didn't you just say,” I objected in a choked whisper, “we shouldn...uh...” It was getting harder to speak as desire to feel his lips made my chest tighten. “Fuck it.”

He went for it.

There was a moment of stillness and heat as our mouths met, like basking in warm sunshine. I could feel his pleasure and surprise that I had let him, but they melted away into confidence as I let my lips part, opening up the kiss into something deeper. He responded to the invitation almost at once, putting his hands around my back to pull me closer as I tasted the inside of his mouth. I liked the sensations, and pushed myself against him as he kissed me harder. Part of my mind kept reminding me that I hardly knew this man, but it was drowned out by hormones and imaginary orchestral ballads.

Eventually, despite my hormones clamoring loudly at me to continue kissing him for a very long time, the sensible part of my mind gained ground. His hands had moved up my waist, brushing the undersides of my breasts, when I turned my head to the side so I could catch my breath and speak. “No,” I panted faintly, “wait, you know, I...I want this but I don't know you that well and you're married and I don't...” It was still surprisingly hard to speak, especially with the way he was looking at me. “I don't really trust myself. We should, ah, we should be friends.”

The word _friends _was laughable in that moment, but in my defense a part of me meant it. A stupid part, probably, because if our chemistry was this obvious this quickly there was probably no chance of a platonic relationship working...but I liked him and wanted to help him, damn it all. I pulled back a little more, glanced around to make sure no one had seen us, and brushed the backs of my fingers over his cheek. It felt achingly intimate and inappropriate, but I couldn't regret it. “I don't want to screw anything up for you.”

The kiss seemed to have awakened more of his confidence, because instead of looking nervously over his shoulder he pulled me closer. “There's only one thing I want to screw right now,” he murmured into my ear, and my breath caught in my chest.

“I...” I gasped hopelessly against the pull of desire. “...really shouldn't...I just wanted you to, you know...feel better...” I gave up and surrendered to another minute of kissing.

“This does make me feel better,” he said softly and persuasively when we broke for air.

“You really smell good,” I told him, running my nose along the side of his jaw. “And taste.”

He lifted an eyebrow and smiled at me. “So do you.” He kissed me harder again, and I let myself get lost in the caress of his tongue and press of his lips. My fingertips pushed into his back between his shoulder blades, and my hips rocked slightly forward to tell him what I wanted. 

“Good,” I told him as I tried to quell a bit of my desire. “You...you seem like you deserve something nice.” I followed the words with another furious kiss. My hands crept up to his neck this time. He was substantially taller than me, but felt just perfect pressed against me. A little moan stuck in the back of my throat. “You're...you're a good guy, right?” I asked desperately the next time we stopped and looked around us. It was hard to stop looking at each other, but it was also hard to forget that anyone could walk around the corner at any minute and bring all kinds of disaster. “I mean,” I tried to explain, “I don't usually do this with men I just met.”

“I don't either,” he assured me, and I could hear a sort of craving in his voice, too. “But you, you make me feel special, appreciated...it's, uh, it's been a long time since I've had that.”

He started to look dejected again as he admitted that, which I refused to accept. I massaged the back of his neck as I told him “That's good to know. I want to make you feel more special. I want to know more about you. I want to get you somewhere with a door and lock before I spontaneously combust.”

He blanched slightly at that, as if I might actually turn into a pillar of flame, and I laughed giddily. “Not _really_! I just...” I pressed my hips harder against him. “I really want this.” I took a deep breath. “But right now is not, you know, the best time. I have no idea what your situation is really like, or how much of a disaster this could be. I'd feel better if you thought it through for a few minutes. Maybe I'm not worth the risk.” I smiled a little sadly, and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Besides, I have two kids who are currently tearing around this party somewhere, and they aren't quite old enough that I could just disappear indefinitely without causing some problems.” I paused as another thought made me laugh. “Also I don't know if one of these is your house, but the middle of someone's yard is not really the ideal location.”

He didn't seem to love any of these points, but he did reluctantly subside and step back, leaning against the wall as if we'd been doing nothing more than friendly chatting all along. I mimicked him. It took effort.

“So what do you suggest, then?”

I took a deep, slow, steady breath. “I give you my phone number. We can just text if you want, that's safe. I can help if you need to talk or whatever.” It wasn't what my body wanted, but I meant it all the same. “_Or_, you can write me and we can find a better time and place to meet up.”

He leaned in closer again, voice surprisingly seductive. “Or you could give me your address instead, and I turn up there later.”

I gulped, but resisted with a sad little smile. “Before the insanity wears off, you mean? Or after?”

“What if it doesn't?” he challenged me, folding his arms over his chest.

My smile was more genuine as I answered that one. “Then I look forward to talking with you more. Among other things.”

He passed me his cell phone, and cleared his throat awkwardly again. “So, uh...how old are your kids?”

I beamed as I opened a new contact screen and entered my number. “Aww, you're actually making an effort. You _are _sweet.”

He flashed me a quick but sincere grin. “Well?”

I added my name and hit _save_. “Four and eight. Boys.” I passed it back to him. “And I am going to walk away now while I'm still hanging on to a tiny bit of self-control.” Impulsively, I gave him a peck on the cheek before turning away. “Because I like you. And you're right, you _are _good at other things.” I winked, and made myself leave.

*

The more removed I got from the conversation, the more regrets I seemed to have. Now that he wasn't right in front of me and my hormones had space to calm down a little, I realized it was easy to _say _Jerry's wife ought to appreciate him more, maybe even believe it...but I didn't know her, and I barely knew him, and what the hell was I doing trying to jump into the middle of all that? Who was that really going to help?

I almost hoped he wouldn't contact me, because I didn't need those sorts of complications and I didn't want to wrong anybody...and quite frankly, I was scared. But I still thought about his kisses when I was alone in bed with a vibrator that night, and I thought about his smile as I drifted off to sleep. I hadn't heard from him by the following morning and started to doubt I ever would, but I still thought about him on and off through that day and the next. I realized he had probably come to his senses. Even though part of me was disappointed, I took heart in the conclusion that I must have done the right thing.

Three months later, and I had almost—but not quite—stopped thinking about him. Then my phone rang out of the blue, displaying a local number I didn't know. Usually I would have let it go to voicemail, but what with the Galactic Federation collapsing and Earth regaining its autonomy, it had been a weird day and I was a little out of sorts. I answered it. “Hello?”

“Celia?” A male voice, nearly incoherent through tears.

“Yyyyyyesss?” I responded tentatively.

“She left me,” the voice said, and a little guitar chord went off somewhere inside me.

“Jerry?”

“Y-y-y-es,” was the choked answer, followed by a pronounced sniffle.

I both sighed and smiled. “Well, your timing is good, anyway. The kids just left for a weekend with their grandparents. Come on over.”

More sniffles. “You...you mean it?”

A rush of sympathy swept over me. Had he never called because he'd thought better of it, or because he hadn't believed I'd really _meant _ it? “Yes,” I told him firmly, and gave my address.

“O...okay,” he stammered pathetically, and ended the call.

For a minute I stared at the phone in my hand, processing what had just happened. Then, abruptly, I realized the block party from last summer had only been ten minutes from my own neighborhood, fifteen if I was lucky, and God knew where he'd been calling from but he could be on my doorstep very soon.

What followed was a flurry of activity.

I had never been particularly feminine, not the sort of woman to go through six changes of clothes before a date—or even, though I wasn't keen to admit it, in a regular week. I was clean, at least, but I hurriedly touched up my legs and bikini zone with an electric razor. Then I switched out my nightshirt for a matching pair of underwear, clean jeans, and a fitted T-shirt. I shook the ponytail out of my hair and ran a comb through it till it shone in long chestnut waves, I brushed my teeth, I dabbed on a tiny bit of lip gloss. I went to the kitchen and hastily shoved dishes into the washer, wiped off the counter, and debated over opening a bottle of wine. I couldn't decide, so I sprayed some Febreeze around the house while I thought it over.

None of this was in an effort to get laid, per se. I would never take advantage of a man right after he was dealt an emotional, life-changing, devastating blow like this.

But I _was _going to be prepared if he decided to take advantage of _me. _

The doorbell rang, and I walked in pace with the thumping of my heart as I went to answer it. Funny what nerves and memories can do; I'd hardly thought about him in the past week, but now I was struggling to contain my excitement.

I pulled open the door to find him with his hands shoved in his pockets, eyes red, face lined with pain, looking utterly miserable and helpless. He looked at me, then quickly looked away in shame. “Sorry,” he mumbled, shrugging half-heartedly.

“For what?” I smiled kindly, and stepped down off the doorstep toward him.

“This isn't what you meant when you told me to call you.”

Gently, I slipped my hand into his. “Yes it is. I believe I checked D, all of the above.” I stepped back into the house, pulling him along with me. “I'm happy that you felt you could call.”

He wiped his now-dry cheeks with the palm of his free hand. “I didn't know what else to do,” he choked out sadly. “I...I don't...”

“Shhh,” I told him, and shut the door behind us. “It's fine. It's fine. Come here.”

I pulled him into a reassuring hug, and he didn't resist. It didn't turn into anything else, didn't become infused with volatile desire or uncertainty. He hugged me back hard, pressing his face into my hair almost like a child. I moved my hands slowly and soothingly over his back. “I'm so sorry,” I whispered, tightening my arms around him. “It'll be okay. Oh, I'm so sorry.”

I don't know quite how long we stood there like that, but his eyes were wet again when he shook free and looked at me again. “Thanks,” he said in a small voice.

I smiled at him. “You look like you could use a drink and a nice long talk,” I informed him. “What's your poison?”

We wound up opening the bottle of wine, and I took a healthy sip out of my glass as we settled onto the sofa of my living room. “So...” I hesitated. “What happened? Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to avoid it for now?”

He shook his head and twisted the stem of the glass in his hands, which wasn't really an answer. “I don't want to talk about it. But I feel like I have to. But I don't know where to _start_.”

I moved closer, so that we were close enough to touch but still far from intertwined. “Well, I'm pretty new to the story. Why don't you just start at the beginning?”

“What, like when I first met her?”

I shrugged and nodded.

A smile kindled at the edge of his mouth, and he snorted in what sounded like the start of a laugh, but then resentment took over. “I was sixteen. We had math class together, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. I couldn't actually work up the nerve to ask her out until almost a year later...and trust me, I really had to work up to it. I kissed her and she didn't run away, so...you know. That was good. That was probably the crowing achievement of my life.” He laughed bitterly, and I could practically see self-loathing wriggling under his skin.

“She must have done a little more than not just run away, if you wound up married to her,” I pointed out, hoping he'd continue. The more he talked the more I wanted to figure him out and help him, but I couldn't do that without knowing more. (Or ripping off my clothes, I suppose, but that might not be the most effective form of long-term help.)

The comment did not cheer him up, but it did keep him talking. “It went along...okay, I guess. We were dating for a few months. I fell in love with her. She was brilliant and confident and pretty and I was...” He stopped and lifted his eyebrows almost defiantly. “I didn't know what I wanted out of life, except for her. You know that movie, with the guy holding up the stereo with Peter Gabriel?”

“Say Anything,” I nodded.

“No,” he shook his head. “The one where the girl's really smart and amazing, and the guy's a big nobody, but he still gets the girl?”

I nodded again, more forcefully. “Say Anything,” I repeated. “That's the movie. Trust me, my best friend in high school was in love with John Cusack. So you were basically Lloyd?”

“Who?”

I stared at him, tempted to laugh. “Seriously? Lloyd Dobbler? The main character? You're the one who brought up the movie!”

“I...I guess.” He thought about that and took a swallow of wine before continuing. “Things were going pretty okay at senior prom. That's when we first made love.” The fondness into his face darkened into a scowl. “And that's where it all went downhill.”

He didn't say anything, but I remembered thinking, the last time we'd met, that he'd looked too young to have teenage children. I took the logical leap. “She got pregnant?”

Jerry nodded. “And no one has ever let me forget it. Like I did it just so she'd have to marry me. Like I did it to screw up her life! Why would I do that? I didn't _do _that. It just...happened.”

“And she wanted to keep it?” I asked cautiously.

He took a larger sip of wine, and grimaced. “No. She wanted an abortion. I talked her out of it.”

I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to that. “Well, you have two kids who are probably glad you did, right? It can't have been all bad.”

He sighed shakily. “I guess? But it wasn't easy. I never found out what I was really good at, because I had to get a job to support a family....I mean, okay, so maybe my parents helped out until I finished college....in retrospect maybe I shouldn't have majored in Civics...aaaaaanyhow, I got a job after that. And we got her through vet school, which was kinda an accomplishment, right? You'd think. She resents me for it because she's a surgeon on horses instead of humans, but I worked hard so she could cut up horses, you know?” He was reaching his stride now, the words flowing easily, bitter and indignant. Maybe it was just because I was hearing it from him, or maybe it was because I'd spent years working hard while my husband went to law school, but I was very inclined to take Jerry's side here.

“And...” Just as abruptly, he faltered. “I lied when I met you. Didn't I tell you about my advertising work?”

I nodded, confused, and hid behind my wine glass. “It wasn't true?”

“No, it...it was. Kind of. My apple campaign didn't really go so well. I worked really hard to get that opportunity, and that was the _best _I could do. And they hated it. They fired me.”

I stared at him, perplexed. “Seriously? But...but I remember it. I thought it was good. Hungry for apples, right? They hated it?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged miserably, but vacillated back toward irritation as he fully processed my words. “Yeah! It _was _good! _You _remember it! You're a target demographic, and you said it made you want to eat an apple!”

“It did.” I paused to take a drink before smiling apologetically. “But I'm afraid I'm not a target demographic. Turned 35 last year, now no one in advertising cares what I think.”

“Then it's a good thing I'm not in advertising anymore, because _I _do.” He smiled at me.

A blush accompanied my answering grin. “Anyway, go on?”

He went on. He told me about his kids, Summer and Mortimer. He spoke fondly about taking them places when they were little, and of attempts to give them advice and help with homework even now when the solutions usually eluded him. I chipped in occasionally with stories about my own kids, partly because I wanted to share a little bit of my life with him, too, but mostly just to show I understood. Being a parent was never easy, but it was usually rewarding. And Jerry was clearly doing his best.

He told me about his father-in-law, Rick, and how he'd turned up on their doorstep after a fourteen-year absence; how his wife had been so eager to rekindle a relationship with him that she invited him to move in. At least according to Jerry, the guy spent all his time drinking, doing dangerous experiments in their garage, winning the love of Summer and Morty, and making snarky comments about his daughter's choice in husband. I had to admit, it didn't sound comfortable. It sounded like Jerry felt he'd effectively been usurped as the man of the house, and by someone who constantly belittled him.

He told me about how painful losing his job had been, and about the stretch of unemployment that followed. After you've gone to work in a suit, it's hard to want to go back to stocking shelves at Walmart, but after getting fired from your first respectable job it's hard to find the courage to go for another one like it. On the other hand, sitting at home getting mocked and made to feel useless by your family didn't sound like a cakewalk, either.

He told me about his other job, too, for the Federation. Not that it had lasted long or that he'd gone into it voluntarily...or gotten paid in any real way...but it had been a job. We spent a while talking about the Federation, and how screwed up that whole thing had been; out of nowhere, an alien race taking over Earth and offering us all sorts of “upgrades” to our daily lives. Just this afternoon, they'd all departed as suddenly as they'd arrived. Having them gone again was strange but wonderful, and we spent a while debating whether life was going to go back to normal now. 

Jerry seemed a bit surprised I'd spent my day working, grocery shopping, and sending my kids off to visit their grandparents. I pointed out that, since I wasn't directly involved with the government, it had seemed like the only sane thing to do. In contrast, he told me a thrilling story of escaping the building during the government collapse!. No wonder he was puzzled by my mundane activities! It didn't elude me that, after a day of excitement and terror, his wife had decided to kick him out. How he was still on his feet at all (well, on my sofa, but the point stands) was something of a miracle.

And he told me about Beth. It was obvious he loved her, but the more he told me the more I resented this woman I'd never met. Sure, it sounded like she had her own issues to deal with—having a kid out of high school wasn't ideal for anyone's dreams, not to mention the impact her parents divorcing and her dad disappearing would have had on her outlook. But that didn't forgive what sounded like an almost total lack of investment in her marriage or interest in her husband's happiness. They fought about nearly everything, and the sad thing was that Jerry was clearly trying to downplay it in his stories. It sounded, honestly, as if he'd been half expecting her to leave for months, maybe even years, but they'd somehow kept fumbling along.

The whole conversation had the makings for a real downer of an evening. But there were two good things about it, which prevented it from becoming a wholly depressing night. First, even though the subject matter clearly pained Jerry to talk about (he sometimes had to stop to collect himself, and I didn't blame him), unburdening himself did seem to have a therapeutic effect. The longer we talked, the more animated he became, and the less he teared up. By the time he'd came up to the present day, the bottle of wine was almost gone and he was highlighting the funnier parts of the stories and laughing rather than sniffling. He also, as time went on, gained a sense of indignation and anger about some of the things that he'd gone through. I felt this was much healthier than internalizing it.

The other good thing about having him essentially pour out his life story was that I learned a lot more about him than I would have on some sort of date. Not just from the details of his life he shared, but from the way he spoke and the jokes he told and the way he felt about things. So I knew that he was unemployed, insecure, almost certainly high-maintenance, and desperate for some sort of validation. He was also adorable, goofy, and caring. I was happy he'd come to me tonight, because I was enjoying getting to know him, but a darker part of me wished he'd picked someone else because now I was either going to be a friend or a rebound. Nothing more. And I _would _have dated him.

“So you still haven't told me what happened _today_,” I pointed out as I split the last little bit of wine between our glasses. “With Beth, I mean.” I was only vaguely tipsy, and Jerry didn't seem completely tanked either. He seemed a little slower, maybe. Drowsier. He'd stretched out on my sofa, propping his head on its arm and stretching his legs out casually over my lap.

Jerry sighed—a long, drawn-out, self-pitying sound. “I made her choose. Stupid, right?”

“Choose?” I downed my wine, then leaned over his legs to set the empty glass on the coffee table.

He fanned a yawn and nodded. “Rick. He gets keeps getting the family into trouble, and she doesn't see it. I thought she did, after the catastrophe today. I thought I was just putting my foot down, you know? Keeping our family safe. But no, her dad's the big hero and I was waaaaaay out of line.” He actually rolled his eyes.

I giggled. “She sounds like she needs her head examined.”

“Really?” He looked so pleasantly surprised, so eager for approval from anywhere. 

It made it hard to mislead him. “Well...people are complicated. _Relationships_ are complicated. I'm sure she has _some _valid points. But I stand by what I said when we met. She ought to appreciate you more. If she doesn't, and she's not going to...then maybe you're better off.”

He dumped his glass on the table and leaned forward to pull me up against him in a hug. I was caught off guard, and sort of went “oof” instead of saying anything nice, but he didn't seem to care. “Thank you,” he said, burying his face in my shoulder.

I tried to shift so that I could hug him back properly, but I was stuck at the wrong angle. I patted him awkwardly on the arm instead. “Hey, any time. I mean, it's not hard to say stuff I mean. I mean...gah. Happy to help, okay? I didn't really do anything special.”

His face was still pressed into my neck, but he nodded. “Yes, you did. You really did.”

Again, I tried to give him a hug that didn't wrench my arm out of its socket, and failed. “Ugh. Gah. Jerry, move.”

He lifted his head, blinked, and laughed when he finally saw how he'd trapped me. “Sorry.” He released me, and I scooted around so I could give him a nice, calm, painless hug. It didn't create instant, unrelenting chemistry like it had last summer, but it was still very pleasant.

“Mmm,” he murmured happily, and I felt a twinge deep inside me that made me reevaluate that “no instant chemistry” thought. I didn't deny the feeling, but I did remind myself that what Jerry needed right now was not me trying to take his pants off.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked quietly, letting him continue leaning against me.

He was silent for a while, thinking about that. “Honestly, I have no idea. Kill myself?”

I laughed, then stopped, then laughed again. “You won't _really_?”

He turned his head and smiled. There was some sorrow in it, but enough life in his eyes that I was pretty sure it had been a joke. “I threatened to, once or twice. If she ever left me.” He cleared his throat. “That was probably, uh...that was probably a bad move on my part.”

I lifted my eyebrows and smirked. “Nah. What woman doesn't love being guilted into things by the threat of suicide?”

Jerry winced. “I guess I deserve that.”

I patted him sympathetically on the back. “We've probably all said it at some point. Don't beat yourself up. You wouldn't really have _done _it though, right?”

The smile came back to his eyes, as he could hear the actual concern in my voice. “Oh, I don't know. I might still do it. I think I'll go do it right now.”

“No you won't,” I told him confidently, a grin tugging at my lips.

“What do you mean, I won't?” He sat back and folded his arms defiantly over his chest. “Don't presume to tell me what I will and will not do, you don't know me!”

My jaw dropped slightly in surprise and delight as I recognized the quote. I shrugged. “Well, you would've done it already.”

I saw the same joy find its way onto his face as he realized I'd not only placed the quote, but matched it. Then he turned his head huffily. “You're distracting me. Go away.”

I bit my lip, but it didn't stop my spreading grin. “I can't now. I'm involved. Also, this is my house, Rose.”

He started laughing. I started laughing. The moment was magic.

“How many times have _you _seen it?” he asked when the laughter subsided.

“Oh, I don't even know,” I responded, still smiling to myself. “I think it was eleven times while it was still in theaters, and at least a handful since then.”

“But you still remember the quotes.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Jerry. Eleven times. Eleven. My best friend and I used to write each other pages of notes in class, that were just page after page of quotes from _Titanic_. Of course I remember. What about you?”

“Only six in theaters.” He smiled languidly. “But at least once a year since then. It's one of my favorites.”

“Hey, six isn't too shabby. So you like it for more than the, uh, the drawing scene?”

He looked slightly uncomfortable, but laughed again. “Well who doesn't like that scene.”

I put a hand coyly on his arm, hoping the look in my eyes was enough to show him I was just teasing. “Jerry,” I said breathily. “I want you to draw me like one of your French girls.”

“Oh, ah, um.” He tugged at his collar. “I'm, uh...I'm not really much of an artist.”

I threw back my head, laughed, and hugged him again. “How about we watch the movie then, instead?”

“Oh!” He started to relax, laughing with me. “Yeah. Yeah, that'd...uh...you're not going to pull a gun on me, are you?”

“What?” I jerked back as if I'd been slapped. “Why the _hell _would you think that?”

He went back to looking uncomfortable. “The last woman who...you know...” he cleared his throat. “Never mind. That's not a story for today.”

I eyed him with concern. “You sure?” He nodded like he was trying to convince himself. Then he met my eyes, saw the way I was looking at him, and I felt the tension go out of him. “So I can put on the movie, then?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, this time convincingly. “Yeah, that'd...that'd be nice.”

I nodded in agreement. “I'd like it, too. Sounds like a good way to spend the rest of the night.”

“Oh. Er...I don't know what I'm...”

I figured out what he was worried about this time. “You can stay the night here if you want. No expectations. I'm here alone till Sunday night, so you're welcome to stick around until then. Give you a chance to figure out where you're going next.”

“Thanks,” he reiterated. “Why are you...why are you being so nice to me?”

“Oh, Jerry.” That made me sad, even though I supposed I should have expected it after everything I heard. “I already told you why. Because I like you, because I can, and because you deserve it. Figuring out what to do tomorrow is going to be a big enough pain in the ass without worrying where you're going to sleep, isn't it?”

He could have gone to a hotel, I suppose. But that wasn't money he'd want to spend unless he had to. At any rate, he was pretty quick to accept my offer.

Watching _Titanic_ on my living room sofa at one in the morning with Jerry was the most I'd enjoyed that movie since my freshman year of high school. It was way more fun than it had any right to be, really. Maybe it was that we were both parents with no responsibilities that night, watching something we'd enjoyed at fifteen, but we acted stupid enough to rival a pair of real high schoolers. The movie was both quoted along with to embarrassing extents, _and _paused every few minutes to discuss it. I filled him in on all the crushes I'd had on the men on board the ship and things I'd found funny after too many times seeing it in theaters. He shared real details of the ship with me (it turned out he'd studied it at length) and the trip he'd taken on Titanic 2 with Beth (it sounded like she'd been a terrible date, the ship had failed to sink as intended, and there'd been some sort of situation with a maid which he wasn't keen to discuss, but the boat itself sounded incredible).

We both passed out before we made it to the end of the movie.

To be fair, the movie is over three hours even when you _don't _pause it every five minutes for conversation. The boat had barely hit the iceberg when I glanced over and saw Jerry's eyes drifting shut as his head drooped back into the sofa. The sentimental fireworks that went off in my heart at seeing him asleep should have been enough to warn me about how much I already liked him. But even if I'd listened, what was I really going to do about it at this point?

I pulled a blanket over him and watched him fondly for a minute, then ascended the stairs to my bedroom and my own bed.

*

By the time I came downstairs the following morning, he was already awake. He must have retrieved his phone charger from his car at some point—or else his cell phone had a much better battery than mine did—because he was lying on the sofa watching something on it.

“You look pretty comfortable,” I remarked with a smile, and his head snapped up to see me standing on the last step. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Y...y...” He cleared his throat. “Yes. Thanks. Did you? Well, what am I saying, it's your house, I'm sure you slept just fine...er...”

I smiled again, biting my lower lip as I tried to contain it. “You don't need to get all awkward, you know. It's not like we slept together. Do you want some coffee?”

“I, uh...sure?” I walked into the kitchen, and he stood up to follow me. “Can I give you a hand?”

“Not making coffee,” I declined politely. “But if you're hungry, then sure.”

“Really?”

Ever so slightly, I rolled my eyes. “Should I be worried by that question? Are you a terrible cook?”

“Um...no?” He didn't sound too sure about that.

My lips tightened in amusement. I didn't want to laugh, but he was so_ cute_. “Well, what do you normally have for breakfast?”

“Cereal?” Why did he make everything sound like a question? And why did I find it so endearing? “Eggs and toast, sometimes? Fruit?”

“Ooh, I've got the perfect thing.” I opened the fridge and reached in to produce a couple of Granny Smith apples.

Jerry narrowed his eyes. “You're making fun of me.”

I grinned. “I'd never do such a thing!”

That got me a patronizing look.

“What?” I exclaimed in protest. “Isn't it just _possible _that I _genuinely _liked that idea and _actually _want to eat an apple?”

He looked torn between suspicion and smugness. “I guess it's _possible_...”

I set the apples on the counter. “Of course it's possible. Do you need a shower or anything?” A horrible realization hit me. “I never showed you the bathroom last night! Are you about to explode? Oh God I'm sorry.”

“Celia.” He held up a hand to calm me. “I found it.”

“Oh. Good.” Awkwardly, I focused on the coffee grounds I was scooping. “How long have you been up?”

“Only half an hour or so. And yes, a shower would be great.” He paused, like he'd been about to say something else and thought better of it. “You know, you're...not quite what I expected.”

“Oh?” I lifted my eyebrows in a polite question. “What did you expect?” He didn't seem to want to answer that, so I supplied an answer for him. “That I'd answer the door in my lingerie? I told you I'm not really that kind of girl.”

“No, no, no! That's not what I...well, maybe just a little.” He had the decency to blush.

Pleased with his honesty, I shrugged amiably and switched on the coffee pot. “Well, maybe I was reading the signs wrong, but I didn't think that was what you needed last night.”

He stepped closer. “And what about this morning?”

I swallowed and took a small step back. “I thought we'd have some breakfast, maybe finish watching the movie from last night. Then, ah, you should, um. Probably go home to talk to your family, right? And get some things?”

“I have a bag in my car. And I don't think they want to see me just now.”

I considered. “Have you talked to Beth?”

Jerry's face hardened. “I think she said plenty yesterday. What I guess I need to do is find an apartment.”

I tossed up a goofy salute. “In that case, I will google local apartments while you go take a shower, and then you can join me for coffee. Any requirements I should know about?”

He thought it over, and his shoulders slumped. “Cheap,” he told me.

“Got it.” I pointed him in the direction of the shower.

After he'd gone, I mentally kicked myself for taking that step back, for mentioning his family. If I hadn't chickened out, I could have been in that shower _with _him. All sorts of tempting thoughts filled my head, but I held firm in my resolve. True to my word, I sat down at my laptop while the coffee brewed, and ran a search on affordable apartments. I wasn't sure about Jerry's definition of cheap, but given he was unemployed and divorcing it seemed like most of the really nice ones were out of the running. I tried to figure out which of the cheap ones might be the least crappy, and then looked at it from the other way around to see which of the not-crappy ones were the cheapest. None of them were especially enticing, but I'd let him make the decision for himself. Two of them _did _have offices open this afternoon, so at least there was some potential there.

I heard the shower shut off upstairs, and poured out two mugs of dark coffee. I was adding three spoonfuls of sugar (no milk) to mine when footsteps came into the kitchen, so without turning I asked “How do you take your coffee?”

“Milk and sugar. I can do it.” I stepped to the side so he could fix it, glancing at him as I did so. His hair was still damp, and though he'd put yesterday's clothes back on I could smell the soap and see the stray droplets of water sticking to his skin. I squared by shoulders and stirred my coffee resolutely. “So did you, uh, find anything?”

I made a face. “You're probably not gonna like it. Unless you're a great interior decorator? Here, I'll show you.” I sat down at my computer again, and he pulled up a chair next to me. “Option A: sad bachelor pad with minimum effort put in.” They hadn't even tried to make the rooms look good in the _pictures_, for God's sake. The only thing it had going for it was the price. “Option B,” I went on, clicking to a new tab, “artist studio apartment which probably doesn't pass safety standards and I'd bet even money has rats. But I mean, hey, there are worse roommates, right?” He laughed weakly at that, at least. “And Option C, the place that looks trendy but was obviously done on the cheap, marketed toward the young-single-and-possibly-still-in-school crowd, so guaranteed to be noisy.”

“Hey, I can do trendy. I can fit in with a group of college kids, right...biyatch?”

I couldn't help laughing as I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, Jerry, _no_.”

“What? I'm totally hip. You're laughing at me, that's _whack_, yo.” He cocked his eyebrows at me, dead serious, and I couldn't contain myself.

“We cool, we cool,” I managed to assure him hastily before I started giggling again. “What else you got, homeboy? Throw some at me.”

“Oh now you're playing me.”

Another burst of laughter hit me. “How do you do that?”  
“Do what?” He puffed out his chest, looking pleased with himself.

“Talk like that without laughing! I can't even do a rap pose without losing my shit.”

“Practice,” he said, perfectly confident and convincing, which made me choke on my coffee.

“Maybe I should have majored in Civics, too,” I chuckled as I wiped a hand across my mouth. “Gah, sorry, yuck.”

“No, no,” he told me, with arrogance that I strongly suspected was put-on. “This is just natural talent.”

I set my mug down a safe distance away. “You know, I think kids these days mostly just say stuff like 'netflix and chill' or 'swipe left.' Whatever that means. I can't even keep track of all the internet memes, I'd be totally screwed.”

“Hanging out with teenagers teaches you a few things,” Jerry pointed out.

“Yeah,” I countered, “that they really hate it when their parents try to act cool.” That time _he _snorted in laughter, and nodded because I was right. “So what do you say, wanna call up any of these places and set up an appointment?”

“No, not really,” he said frankly, and we shared a grin. “But I suppose I can't rely on your hospitality forever, so I better go take a look at my options.”

I read him off the phone number for Option C, and opened the news in a new tab while he called and arranged an appointment. I read about the official reinstatement of power in the United States government and about the new Ugliest Dog in America while sipping coffee as he called up Option B and left a voice message. I looked at pictures of previous Ugliest Dogs as he reached Option A and set up an appointment there.

“So?” I asked when he completed the last call. “Two o'clock and four o'clock,” he reported back. “That should give us more than enough time in between places, don't you think?”

Us? “Oh, so I get to tag along too?”

He cocked one eyebrow in a look that was almost patronizing. “I'm going to take all the moral support I can get, thanks.”

I pretended to not be pleased by this, and failed. “Good point. I'm thrilled to be held in such high esteem.” I took a small, seated, bow. “And let me congratulate you on a job well done.”

“What job?”

I pointed to the clock on my computer screen. “It's only ten-fifty in the morning, and you've already showered, made plans for the day, and said the right thing to a woman. Round of applause.”

His eyes searched mine. “You're teasing me.”

“I'm trying to be funny with the truth,” I corrected him. “There's a difference.” I stood up. “So shall we go finish watching the longest movie ever?”

“I don't know, do you think we can finish it before two o'clock?” I really enjoyed that faint suggestion of amusement and arrogance in his voice.

“Probably not,” I admitted freely. “But that's okay.”

*

We did finish it, in fact. But we were very nearly late to his first appointment as a result. The young woman handing out form after form in the main office made a few too many presumptions about our relationship, but that was forgivable. The place itself was actually nicer than I'd judged it from the site, though the décor felt somehow like it was trying too hard. The paperwork was extensive, though, and the lowest monthly rent she quoted made Jerry cringe. Alright, time to examine the cheaper options. Since Option B hadn't gotten back to him yet, we headed over to Option A next.

It was dreadful. The guy in the office clearly didn't give a shit, and the room he showed us reminded me more of a cheap motel than anywhere you'd actually call home. It was one long room and a bathroom, completely in various shades of drab and brown. The only selling points were the low rent, and the fact the furniture included seemed free of bed bugs.

Jerry looked ready to sign up. I was appalled. “Don't you have _any _self-respect?” I hissed when the facility's representative was out of range. “You can't live _here_!”

He shrugged lethargically. “I don't think I get to have more self-respect than I have income. Anyway, people live here! It can't be that bad!” He grimaced, trying hard to be optimistic. It was cute.

“At least sleep on it,” I pleaded. “See if you hear back from the other place.” 

“Celia, I need somewhere to live _now,_” he sighed.

I put my foot down. “You can rent my basement.”

“I....what?”

I hadn't remotely thought this through, but I plowed ahead with the idea anyway. “We have a spare room in the basement. I could use a little extra income. I mean, it's not ideal, you'd have to share our kitchen and shower facilities. But it's better than _this_. This is just...this is depressing.”

“You're asking me to move in with you.” He looked at me like I was crazy.

I tossed my head haughtily. “It's a business proposition. I'm not offering to share my bed.”

If he was disappointed with that addendum, he did a good job of concealing it. “....okay, let's talk.”

I considered. “Fifty bucks a month, plus a quarter of monthly utilities. If the kids and I are out, the house is yours. If I'm busy with them at home, you stick to your room.” Seemed reasonable to me.

Jerry stared at me. “And?”

“And?” I cocked my head curiously. “That's it, unless there's something major about your lifestyle I should know about?” As he shook his head, one final thought did occur to me. I held up a finger. “Oh, okay. And Rick is not allowed in my house.”

He grinned broadly at that. “And that's it?”

I spread my hands. “That's it?”

“Then I accept.” He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.

“Great. Now let's get out of this place and go get some ice cream. It's depressing here and I'm starving.”

“It's been a long time since I had a landlord,” he told me mildly as we excused ourselves from the premises, “but you're definitely my favorite one this decade.”

I laughed. “Just wait till I yell at you to stop with all your noisy parties.”

“Oh, I don't think I...” he realized I was joking, stopped, and smiled. “So should we put this in writing or something?”

“Yes,” I agreed, knowing the value of even an amateur contract, “but first I need food. I like apples and coffee, but you know, they wear off. How do you feel about Coldstone?”

“Like I can't drive there fast enough,” he answered heartily, and whistled the rest of the way to the car.

*

It turned out Jerry loved Coldstone as much as I did. “I think maybe we're soul mates,” I remarked, kidding on the square, as I scooped the most melted parts of my ice cream onto my spoon.

“Impossible.” He took a bite off his cone. “You actually seem to like me.”

“Whooooo.” I fanned myself. “That's _dark_, Jerry.” I set my spoon down. “Seriously. Yikes.”

“Sorry,” he said, not really looking it.

I shook my head in disbelief. “I don't think I quite dare ask your views on the universe and religion, after a comment like that.”

“Which universe?”

That brought me up short. “Come again?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, with all the aliens and the Federation and everything...and Rick is always taking trips through what's called the, uh, multiverse? I guess there's a whole bunch of other worlds just like ours with other versions of us?” He took another bite of ice cream, completely unperturbed.

“Yeah, I...I know about the theory of the multiverse.” I was staring at him, wondering how this subject had arisen to nonchalantly. “They're infinite, right? Every possible decision is played out somewhere in each of them. Like, there's probably another universe somewhere that's just like ours, only I'm eating cookie dough ice cream instead of cake batter.”

“Yeah, that's it!”

“And did you say Rick takes _trips _to them?”

“Uh-huh.” He had ice cream on his nose. “I've gone along a few times, with the kids. He goes all sorts of crazy places.”

I stared.

“Are...are you alright?” 

I nodded slowly. “So there are universes where my husband never died. Where we're still happy.”

Jerry got a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look. “You can't, uh. You know you can't _go _there? Some of them are a lot like ours, sure, but, but some of them get _weird_.”

I raised my eyebrows, broken out of a dangerous line of thinking. “How weird?”

“Where you never existed at all, maybe? Or where you have the same personalities but you're all, I dunno, aliens or something crazy. They come home and tell stories.”

“They?” I blanched. “You mean he takes your_ kids_ to these places?”

“Why do you think I wanted to get rid of him?” he demanded, vindicated.

I hadn't really grasped before what he meant when he said his father-in-law was dangerous. “But that's insane!”

He went back to eating his ice cream. I picked my spoon up slowly. “Preaching to the choir. And that's not even touching all the stuff he keeps in the _house_. One time I opened what I thought was a pint of ice cream, and woke up in an alien hospital.”

If could whistle, I would have chose that moment to do so. “It's amazing you're all still _alive_.”

He shrugged, his face clearly reading _You see what I put up with? _I nodded vehemently. Rick was definitely not allowed in my house or anywhere near my kids, genius or no.

“Good for you,” I said after a minute.

“Hm?”

“For trying to stand up to him.” I decided to take another bite of my own ice cream as I contemplated the implications of a real, accessible multiverse. All these Celias, living their own lives, and what were they doing? Mostly the same thing as me, but what if one of them had never gotten married? What if she had different kids? What if she'd died instead of her husband in the accident? Such weird thoughts.

“So,” I said aloud, “there are universes out there where you never met me. And thus just signed the lease for that awful excuse for an apartment.”

For some reason, this line of questioning seemed to bother him. He stopped eating, and got a faraway look in his eyes. “Yep. There's probably even a universe where I sold the apples campaign and went home to have great sex with my wife.” His laugh seemed a bit forced, too.

I reached a hand across the table toward him, gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said at once with canned optimism, and then checked himself. “K...kind of?” His voice cracked, and I laid my hand on his in concern.”The day we met,” he explained, poorly. “I was thinking, you know, about when we met and you gave me your number...” He laughed weakly and tugged at his collar. “Just thinking, I shouldn't have done that.”

Oh, were we actually going to address this? I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “Kissed me?”

Jerry nodded, shook his head, nodded. “You were being nice, and I reacted wrong. I took it too far. Beth could have walked up at any minute and...”

“And what?” I asked, both respecting what he was saying and hating his unhappy tone. “Yelled at you and belittled you? She did that plenty anyhow. Divorced you? It might have saved you three months of suffering if she'd done it back then.”

He blinked in surprise. “You really don't like her, do you.”

“No,” I stated flatly, and left it at that.

He winced. “Well...uh...anyway. I just thought, um, there's a universe where I didn't do that, and I never got your number, and that's...” He scratched the back of his neck and pulled at his collar again. “That's not right. I should have the better reality for doing the _right _thing, right? Don't you think? But you _helped_ last night. I had _fun _last night. I'm having fun today, actually. And I get to live somewhere nice for practically nothing now. Because I came onto a total stranger last summer. I feel like I should apologize, somehow.” He tugged at his collar once more. 

I couldn't stop my grin. “Jerry. Eat your ice cream. It's alright. I swear. I just have...one question.”

He waited expectantly.

“You said you _shouldn't_ have kissed me. But do you wish you _hadn't?_” I was blushing even before the words were out.

“Well, yeah,” he answered at once, which would have been devastating if he hadn't kept talking. “Now our first kiss isn't a story you tell people. Now it means nothing.”

“Oh, so you think there's going to be more?” I tried to be coy, playful, aloof. I probably pulled off none of it, but I did sound pleased.

He seemed torn between disappointment and amusement. “There's not?”

“Well, I'm your landlord now,” I pointed out with what I hoped was a straight face. “That sounds pretty scandalous.” I laughed at my own joke, and bless his heart, Jerry cracked a smile at it, too. I learned conspiratorially across the table toward him. “I'll tell you what. I'll give you a do-over. The first one never happened. What do you say?”

He shifted in his seat. “That now you've given me plenty of time to get nervous. _Thanks_.”

I giggled, both because of his delivery and the little explosion of joy his comment had set off inside me. I was still probably going to be a rebound. There was no real way around that one. But there was now the possibility that I could be a rebound who meant a little something, too.

That seemed like a really good thing, since I'd invited him to come live in my basement.

Dear God, what sort of complications had I opened myself up for? Maybe there was some universe somewhere where I didn't try to save everyone and get myself into a giant mess...but I doubted it.

*

The remainder of Saturday was lovely. After ice cream we returned to the house, where I showed him the basement and we wrote up a crappy little contract. Jerry really seemed to like writing in the rules, even the ones that prohibited him from doing things. He brought his suitcase from the car to his new room. It was a sunny, relatively warm day for October, so I took myself out for a short walk and let him relax on his own. I enjoyed the sun on my face and the exercise, and returned with cold hands but feeling otherwise refreshed.

He made the mistake—though with luck, he didn't feel it was one—of asking me to tell him more about myself as I ran a load of laundry and cleaned the kitchen. My life didn't sound terribly exciting in comparison to the crap he'd gone through, but I did have some fun stories from the old days, and I at least manage to make him laugh without sending him running for the hills. I told him about the accident, and my kids. I got some good anecdotes about Summer and Morty in exchange. That subject seemed to make him melancholy, though, which made sense because their custody would now undoubtedly be in question. To get his mind off it, I told him to look through my movie collection and select something.

It turned out he liked Star Wars almost as much as Titanic. It would have been nice if it was Lord of the Rings instead, but hey, I liked Star Wars too. And it was another good one for talking through, because who doesn't know half of _A New Hope_ by heart? He told me about the R2-D2 coin collection he had, which I didn't even know existed. We shared memories about the releases of the prequels. I told him about the game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit I lost at so badly in high school because my friend was far more obsessed than me. That peaked his interest in playing a game of Trivial Pursuit; I said that was just because he thought I'd let him win, and he laughed in a refreshingly easy and confident way. I found a copy of the game in the storage side of the basement, and ordered a pizza to enjoy while we played it.

He was terrible at it. _I _was terrible at it. At first it was embarrassing, but the longer it went without either of us getting a question right, the funnier it got. It got to the point where he'd draw a card and I'd say “No fucking clue” before he could even read it—or he'd say “Wrong!” before I had a chance to answer. Regardless, by an hour into the game we were both dissolving with laughter at nearly every question. I might have had the knowledge to answer some of the trivia, but after a long unlucky streak I was laughing so hard I was almost drunk, and it made it a lot harder to answer even the ones I should have known.

Jerry was clutching his stomach, trying to breathe through the laughter, in a similar predicament. “I have no...no idea....no wait, I think I do...is it...uh...the Ah—Atlantic?”

I flipped the card over, made a loud sound like an failure buzzer, and started laughing again. “Pacific.”

“Aren't some of these supposed to be, you know, _easy_?” he demanded, wiping tears of laughter away. “Like, uh, what are the three branches of the US Government? Who was the first president? What does Easter celebrate?”

I rolled my eyes. “_Duh_. It celebrates _Easter_. Um, get a clue?”

We started laughing again.

Eventually things died down, and we got enough of the easy questions that the bursts of giggles became intermittent. “So when do your kids get back?” Jerry asked as he moved a piece along the board. “And what do you want me to do when they do?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.” I fanned a yawn. How had it gotten this late? “Just go hang out downstairs and pretend you're not here for a while...ugh, I know that sounds rude, sorry. But let me _tell_ them we have a tenant before they actually meet you, eh?”

He nodded as thought this was what he'd expected. “I think I'll actually go out, then. Pick up a few more things from the house, say hi to my kids, see how they're doing. Who knows, maybe I can even track down a divorce lawyer tomorrow morning and have an appointment to go to.” He laughed, but it sounded a lot more forced than the laughter we'd been doing for the past two hours.”You know, it's funny, Celia. Hanging out with you almost makes me forget that I just got kicked out of my family and my home.”

We'd been sprawled out on the carpet, the game between us, but now I scooted around to his side and took his hand. “Hey, it's okay,” I told him with as much conviction as I could muster. “You're going to be okay.”

He nodded but didn't look convinced. I moved even closer and pulled him up against my shoulder for another good hug. “Oh, Jerry,” I murmured softly into his neck, almost not realizing I was saying it. “You need so many hugs, don't you. I just want to give you so many.”

“You know what's really sad?” he said after a minute of emotional silence.

“What?”

I felt him take a deep breath. “Last month I spent more than six hours talking with a guy on a 1-900 line just because I didn't have anyone I could really talk to. Summer said I was bored and lonely, Beth told me to get a job to fix it, and I love them but...why don't I feel like I can talk to them? I shouldn't need to call a total stranger just so I can have a conversation with someone who acts like they care, should I? I...I've done some really stupid stuff. I can see why they hate me.”

He hadn't let go of me, and I saw no reason to move away, so I just kept speaking into his neck. “No, hey, no, no. Yes, that's kind of sad. Yes, I believe you've done some stupid things. Hell, _I've _done some stupid things! If you feel like sharing the worst of yours anytime, I'll respond in kind. But anyway...my point is, your family is supposed to love you even when you do stupid shit. That's what family _is_. So don't go taking all the blame on this just because you made a few mistakes along the way, okay?”

He nodded, and hung onto me for dear life. “Thank you.”

“You don't sound convinced,” I sighed. “Don't worry, we'll get there. In the meantime, I'll just keep reminding you. And telling you horrible embarrassing decisions from my past.”

“Oh, you don't have to—” He started to let go and sit back up.

I didn't stop him, exactly, but I gave one more little squeeze to his shoulders. “I don't mind, really. I kind of enjoy the storytelling. So my first one was probably back in grade school, when I had this crush...”

*

Having a tenant in our basement actually worked out fine. The extra money was nice, even if it wasn't much, and initially Jerry was true to his word about staying downstairs whenever the boys and I were home. That status quo didn't last long though, for several reasons. My kids were interested when I broke the news to them, and eager to meet the stranger living in their basement. That part didn't really surprise me, but I _was _impressed by the way the three of them took to each other. Maybe it was the lack of a living father figure who wasn't their grandpa in their life, maybe it was just because Jerry had a knack with young kids that he lacked with adults, but the three of them became fast friends. They went downstairs to bother him frequently, or invited him up to play with them. He was even open to babysitting, which freed me up to get groceries on my own (bliss!) or take an evening walk without whining children.

I was almost jealous, truth be told. Not that I was being left out. I seemed to have a built-in best friend around the place now, and for the most part I enjoyed it. Initially part of me bristled at having another adult in my space so often, even if it was one I liked. And in some ways, he could be as needy as the children. But the main problem was the way our undefined chemistry remained...well, undefined. It was there, to be sure, and if we were alone together for too long the awkwardness of expectation and denial would start to build. It was just that he hadn't made any sort of move, and _I _didn't want to make any sort of move because I didn't want to pressure him.

There was also my secret fear that if we went ahead and slept together, and then realized I was just a rebound after a long unhappy marriage, it would break everything we were building here. I genuinely liked him. The boys liked him. He was helpful and entertaining. I'd wanted him from the start, but the longer we fumbled along without discussing it, the easier it seemed to just be friends.

A few weeks went by. Jerry had a couple of job interviews that sadly didn't turn into anything more. I met Beth in passing, and liked her about as much as I expected to. She did actually seem to be going ahead with the divorce though, and I was grateful (mostly for Jerry's sake) that the whole thing wasn't getting dragged out. I reiterated my invitation for him to bring Summer and Morty by any time, since at this point it was basically his house, too, but the teenagers were predictably uninterested in hanging out with their dad in his new living accommodations. I think Morty might have, but my ban on Rick stood firm, and the two of them seemed to be a package deal most days. It made me glad, in a way, that my kids seemed to have adopted Jerry. He got to feel wanted, involved, like a part of something.

I tried not to think about that too hard. It made my heart hurt.

Enough time went by that I was starting to think about how the heck I should handle Christmas. There didn't seem to be any good answer there, though deep down I already knew I was going to do the kind but dumb thing and include Jerry in the family stuff—unless he had his kids that day. That was my get out of jail free card. But I was going to have to get him a present regardless, and what did you get the man who wasn't quite your boyfriend, but was around at least as much as your husband had ever been?

It was a weekend, and the kids were out playing with their friends down the street. I was baking cookies to get a head start on the season, and Jerry was downstairs watching something on TV. The doorbell rang, and I swore under my breath as I dusted flour off my hands. Hopefully it was just one of the kids, ringing the bell for entertainment value, but either way I had to stop in the middle of rolling dough. Ugh.

Beth stood on my doorstep, hands behind her back, looking fretful. I hadn't seen her often, but she'd always seemed aloof, irritated, or very collected before. “Hi,” I said cautiously, opening the storm door for her.

She gave me a tight smile. “Is my husband in his room?”

_My husband?_ Oh, she had done that on purpose just to make me bristle. I narrowed my eyes, but kept my voice all smiles. “Jerry? Yeah, he's downstairs. Go right ahead. Just make sure you knock first. That room's his home now, you know.”

“Of course,” she simpered, and walked past me.

I didn't know what she was here about, but I did know it was really none of my business. Still, she'd antagonized me. And she was clearly upset. And I cared about the guy she was going to see. I waited until I heard the door open and shut downstairs, and then tiptoed down a few steps in my stocking feet. There was no sign that they'd heard me, so I went down a few more. I could hear the murmur of voices from behind the door now, and...music? Orchestra music?

My head told me I really shouldn't be listening in, but I went silently down two more steps and sat down. “What is this,” I heard Beth saying.

“Senior year,” Jerry replied calmly, “I took you on a date to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, performing the music of Alan Silvestri in the park.” I didn't hear anything from Beth. “At the point in the song from Volcano when Tommy Lee Jones and the utility workers are using cars to gather lava into a cul-de-sac, I realized my palms were so sweaty I would never get to hold your hand, but I was desperate to touch you so I wiped my palm on the grass next to me.”

He was reliving a memory with her. That's what the music was for, too. But _why_? Was this something they'd planned? I didn't think so. And even as jealousy surged unfairly through me, I found myself picturing teenage Jerry, sitting in the grass at the part next to a pretty young girl and getting sweaty hands. The image made me smile fondly.

“But a snickers wrapper kind of got stuck on it,” he continued, “so I started kind of jiggling it and whipping it without moving too much...but you started looking over and I thought, well this is it. She's gonna see that I'm a loser and I'll never get to touch her.” Awww, Jerry! That was both heartbreaking and adorable. “But I still have time to touch her, but my hand had snickers on it and the brass section was swelling because it was the scene with the guy melting in the lava and I just thought, fuck it, lips don't sweat!”

Silence, for long enough that I had time to form a hypothesis about what they were doing in that silence, and think angrily _It's not fair! I didn't even sleep with him! I didn't even date him! And I _still _got myself hurt._ I must have known all along that they were going to get back together, even though it was the wrong thing to do.

I missed the first few words of whatever Jerry said when he did speak again, because they were so soft. I caught “...ver forget that feeling. You're the real thing.”

The real thing. Love. He must mean love, right? _Damn it, Jerry, she's just going to hurt you again!_

“Then that settles it,” said Beth, which didn't seem like the proper response to me. “Because my memory is of hating that night.”

What? Seriously? How could she have felt that, let alone say it? I was dying to be the girl in that story! That story was beautiful and heartwarming. And even if she _had _hated it, why the hell would she say it? I was so incensed I almost blew my cover by marching in to give her a piece of my mind.

I wasn't quite that dumb, though.

“But now,” she went on, “reliving it, all I can feel is how _lucky _I am to be loved by such a simple, honest, simple man.”

Nope, that tore it. I got to my feet and slammed the door open. “What the fuck is wrong with you, lady?” I snarled, making them both jump. They were seated on the floor, and the music was still playing. “You can't even _compliment_ him without insulting him!”

“You were _eavesdropping_?” she demanded, sounding nearly as angry as me. “Where do you get off?” She got back to her feet, hands clenched into fists. Jerry stumbled quickly upward, looking horrified and confused. I found I couldn't look at him right now, so I focused on Beth instead.

“It's my house!” I shot back.

Her lip curled. “Of _course _it is. All that talk about making sure to knock, this room is _his_, and then you barge right in whenever it suits you!”

“This is the first time I've ever done it!” My voice was rapidly rising to a shout.

“Bullshit! You were listening the whole time!”

“You can't just kick him to the curb and ignore him for four months and then waltz back in here and fuck everything up again!”

“I can do whatever I want, he's _my _husband! Come on, Jerry.” She made to push past me and head up the stairs, but stopped when she realized he hadn't immediately followed her. She turned back. “You want to stay married, right? Come on!”

I made myself look back at Jerry. He seemed to have shrunk in on himself like a cornered animal, nervous and uncertain. He hadn't moved. I sighed and fought my tears. “Maybe it _isn't _my place. I don't have a claim or anything. But don't do it, Jerry. Not when you're this close to breaking the cycle after so many years. I know you love her. But you're not _good _for each other.”

“I...uh...” Jerry tugged at his collar. “Uh...”

I sighed again and sat down on the floor, waving my hand lethargically. “Fine. Whatever. Do what you have to do.”

“You're...you're not going to stop me?”

I blinked back tears, and shook my head. “I don't think I _can_.”

“Well, sure, but...you could at least _try_...” He moved closer to me, regardless of the displeasure radiating off Beth.

I swallowed hard, trying to stop myself crying. “You...you _want _me to try?”

“Don't fall for it,” Beth sniffed. “He just wants to feel important for five minutes by having women fight over him.”

If she'd thought that was the thing to say to make me surrender, she had badly miscalculated me. My jaw dropped, and I looked back at Jerry. “How can you let her talk about you like that?” I demanded, insulted and pained more on his behalf than my own. “People who love you don't talk like that.” I got back to my feet, facing down his wife of seventeen years. “Get out.”

“What?” She looked outraged.

I took a step closer to her, even though she was taller and undoubtedly meaner than me. “I said get out. You don't get to talk to my friends that way in my house.”

She sniffed, and shook her head dismissively. “What are you going to do about it? This is Jerry's space. He pays you rent, right? So I'll get out when he _tells _me to g—”

“Get out.”

Both our heads snapped around to look at Jerry. There were still shadows of pain and uncertainty in his eyes and tightened mouth, but his shoulders were squared angrily. “Just leave, Beth. I told you what you needed to know. Let's not pretend you want anything more than that.”

“But...” She seemed stunned by this assertiveness. “But you love me.”

He nodded, but his face didn't soften. “Go home and give our kids a hug for me.”

She glared furiously at him, turned the gaze onto me, and then left without another word.

We stared at each other, listening as the front door opened and shut. “Wow,” Jerry said when the awkwardness crested and someone had to say something.

It broke the tension, and I laughed shakily. “Seriously.”

“I can't believe I said that.” He sounded awed with himself. “I...I must be crazy.”

“You are most definitely _not_,” I told him firmly. “You did the right thing. And I know it was the hard thing, too, so, you know...kudos.” I stepped forward and hugged him. “I'm proud of you.”

His arms crept around my back timidly, and then he was hugging me tightly. “I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks.”

I half-smiled. “You _could _have. But you're right, you probably wouldn't have. Glad to have been of service.”

“No, really, I mean it. _Thanks_.” He held me close and I reciprocated—as always, enjoying the soft heat and masculine smell of him.

It got too nice, and I stepped back, as I always did when I got scared. “So you want to tell me what that was all about?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, ha. She thought her dad cloned her. She thought I'd know if she was a clone.”

That took a second to sink in, and when it did I started laughing. “_What_?” The laughter eased the tension the hug had created. He shrugged helplessly, and shook my head in amusement. “Only your family, I swear.”

“So...” He coughed and tugged at his collar, which was a good hint about what was coming. “Are we going to talk about what just happened?”

I froze, tension coursing up and down my spine and into my limbs. “About me being ready to fight Beth for you, even though it's obvious you still love her?” I croaked. “Nope.”

I managed to turn, and got out the doorway and partway up the stairs before he called me back. “Celia!”

I heard a lot of things in those two syllables, but I kept climbing. “Nope.”

Footsteps behind me, and his hand caught my arm. “I...what do you want me to do?” he asked plaintively.

Reluctantly, I turned back. He was right behind me on the steps, and I put my hand on his cheek. “You already did it,” I told him with a smile, and for the most part, I meant it. “You stood up for yourself. You're still here. And you know? I wouldn't want you to still be here because of me. It's _better_ this way, better that you do it for you.”

“Wh...what are you talking about?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

I sat down on the steps, and he settled himself next to me. I took his hand and met his eyes, and somehow the way he was looking at me just made the words come tumbling out. “Look. I get it. You have been in love with Beth from the moment you met her. And that is absolutely beautiful. The trouble is that she was never in love with you. Yeah, sure, she married you, and to both of your credit you stayed married a long time. But that doesn't mean she would have married you if not for Summer. It doesn't mean she loved you _enough_. Not enough to appreciate your love. Not to appreciate who you are, and all the wonderful little things about you. I think...I think maybe...maybe you both kept trying because of the kids, and because it was more comfortable than starting over, and because you _wanted _to be in love.”

It was getting hard to push the words out again, because of the fear rising in my chest. I forced them, because I knew this was important. This was my whole point. “But she's not the only person in this world you could love. And don't think for a _second _that she's the only person who could fall in love with you.”

“I...uh...um.”

I smiled sadly. “It's okay. I know it's not exactly the right time.”

He was still looking at me that way, twisting things up inside my heart with his wide hazel eyes. When he touched my cheek with his palm, I stiffened. But when he leaned forward and kissed me, I melted.

It was slow, barely a brush of lips at first, deepening into something warm and fierce in its intensity. There was no other contact, just lips and his one hand on my face. If there was any part of my heart I hadn't given him already, I lost it in that kiss.

It didn't last long enough. I could still feel his breath on my face when we stopped, and was reluctant to open my eyes. At last I did, and he was still right there, and there were a dozen things I meant to stay but instead I just moved my mouth back to his.

This time there was no sense of overture, of holding back, of uncertainty. I kissed him _hard_, and he responded with parted lips and enthusiasm. I shifted myself around, trying to overcome our side-by-side position and press more of myself against him. We broke again, and I stood up enough to throw one leg over him, sliding forward into his lap and wrapping my arms around his neck as I welcomed the taste of his lips and tongue. It was hard, deep, and close, and neither of us was breathing steadily when it ended.

“I've wanted you to do that for months,” I said, and started crying.

Jerry moved his hands from my waist up to my face, using his thumbs to wipe away the first little tears. “I've _wanted _to do that for months,” he admitted. “But I kept waiting for the perfect time, and well...heh.” He breathed out an embarrassed laugh.

“Well...” I smiled crookedly, briefly kissed him again. “Don't stop now, please.”

“Since you asked nicely,” he murmured, and pulled me close again.

About a minute and a half (not that I was timing it) of wonderfulness passed. Then we heard the door open again upstairs, followed by several sets of small, hurried footsteps. We broke apart guiltily just as the steps paused and a voice called “Mom? Jerry?”

“Down—” I cleared my throat and blushed faintly. “Down here,” I called back, and slid over so that I was once again sitting chastely next to him when the boys came trampling down the steps.

“I, uh,” Jerry said stupidly, but he was beaming. “I guess we'll revisit this later?”

“Yes,” I smiled back at him, wondering if my grin would split my face. “Please.”

*

Things were both better and worse after that. It was a huge relief to have the cat out of the bag, so to speak, and be able to make out here and there without guilt or anxiety. The trouble, of course, was that the, uh..._cat_ was still in the, uh, _bag_ in certain ways. Having two children under ten in the house, who had no qualms about walking into my _or _Jerry's room and who excelled at asking difficult questions, made it very difficult to seal the deal, romantically speaking. Yes, I could have snuck down to his room in the middle of the night, and we could have been quiet and paranoid, but we kept waiting for an opportunity that was longer than a few stolen minutes in the dark. It was a long time coming, and the sexual tension was getting ridiculous.

On Christmas Eve we were curled up on the sofa together, watching Star Wars with the boys. Just snuggling close, feeling him breathe as I sat against him, my head resting on his shoulder, was enough to make my desire wake up and do a few laps. He put his arm around my waist, and it felt more than cozy. It _should _have just felt cozy and comfortable. But now that I'd had a taste of physicality, I wanted a lot more. I kissed his neck when the kids were engrossed in the show, and let me fingers creep up his thigh a few inches.

“How did people deal with this back when there was no sex before marriage?” I asked softly. “When sitting in a room fully clothed with your entire family was as close as you got to a physical relationship before he put a ring on your finger?”

Jerry surveyed me suspiciously. “If this is your way of angling for a proposal, I'm not even divorced yet.”

I giggled and bumped him with my shoulder. “It is _not_. And I'm aware. I'm just saying...” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I want you. Specifically I want more than I am currently getting.”

He grinned, clearly enjoying hearing that someone found him so desirable. “You _could _always take a day off work when the kids are back in school...”

I gave him a dead-eyed stare. “One, that's like ten days away.” I ticked it off on my fingers. “Two, that's like _ten days away_. Yes, I know I said it twice, but seriously, Jerry. Three, if I take the day off then we _know _it's happening then, and it'll get built up into something big and stressful.”

“Whereas if we don't schedule it, the boys are here and you worry about getting caught,” he pointed out fairly. “Which is it?”

I sighed. “Maybe I can just leave them with my parents tomorrow night?”

“On _Christmas_?”

He was so indignant I had to laugh. “Alright, no, that would be terrible. I just....my hormones are overriding my brain.” I snuggled closer, winding my fingers between his. “I'm going to miss you.”

He rolled his eyes. “There's no way I'm staying with my parents more than two days. You're fine, Shorty.”

I laughed again and nudged him playfully. “_Stupidist_ nickname,” I complained insincerely.

“Hey don't be hatin,” he shot back, which made me laugh more. I kissed him—more chastely than I would have if the boys hadn't been present, but as much as I felt I could get away with. (I'd told them we were dating, and aside from a few nervous questions about what a potential marriage or break-up would mean to their way of life, they seemed pleased. Maybe it was silly of me, since I still doubted there was a real future, but I wanted to enjoy dating him without having to hide it.)

“So what are you going to tell them about your life this year?” I asked, hoping I didn't sound like I was fishing.

“They know about the divorce, if that's what you mean. And the job hunt.”

He looked forlorn when he mentioned that, and I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Hey, don't worry. It's almost the new year. This is going to be your year!”

“Yeah!” he said, pumping himself up. “Yeah, it is! I'm going to, to kick some _butt _this year!”

“Go get 'em, tiger.”

He yawned. “Yeah, after...after the holidays.”

I glanced at the clock. “You're not getting sleepy already?”

“Well I _did _wrap all those presents today,” he reminded me pointedly.

I'd almost forgotten about that, and gasped. “Of course! Thanks again for that.” I kissed his cheek. “Is your back killing you like mine would be?”

“Ah...yeah, a little,” he admitted.

“Okay.” I separated from him, and stood up. It felt good after sitting for an hour, and I stretched. “Survey says Jerry needs a back rub, and since we lack a massage table those are best done on beds. Mine, or yours?”

“Are we really just talking about a back rub here?” he asked slyly.

I shot him a Look_. _“Yes, we are. Do you want one or not?”

“Uh, yeah! Thanks.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Okay, guys, we'll be downstairs for a few if you need us.” The movie was at the part with the trash compactor, so neither of them paid much attention to our departure.

“Don't you think this might be a mistake?” Jerry asked once we were alone in the basement.

“What do you mean? I really appreciate your help with all the holiday shit, and I know how much back tension hurts. I pretty much spend all of winter with my shoulders in knots.”

The hint went right over his head, but that was what I got for trying to drop hints. Jerry had a lot of good qualities, but picking up on subtly was not one of them. Anyway, right now he was clearly too focused on his own train of thought for anything I said to derail it. “You were just saying how challenging abstinence is, and then you take me down here alone for a massage.”

“With your shirt off,” I agreed, wincing.

“What? It's still on—oh. Right.” He pulled his shirt off and obediently lay down on his stomach. I'd seen him shirtless around the house enough times that this didn't instantly turn me into a puddle, but it didn't help matters, either.

“You are absolutely right,” I agreed, straddling his back and placing the balls of my palms between his shoulders. “This is a terrible idea.” I pressed down and pushed my hands upward.

“You're—oooohhh—doing it anyway?”

I grinned, even though he couldn't see it. “You know me so well.”

“Yeah...I _do_, don't I.” He sounded smug. I repositioned my hands to dig in and slide up again, and he exhaled deeply.

I leaned forward to kiss his neck, ignoring the little flares of longing that went off inside me. “You do.” I kept massaging, and he went quiet. At first I thought he was just enjoying the feeling, then I started to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. “Jerry?” He didn't say anything, and his breathing was slow and comfortable. I stopped rubbing and lay down carefully against the heat of his bare back, nestling my face between his shoulder and neck and slowly wrapping my arms around him. I sighed softly. “Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

It was so comfortable and intimate, and a flood of tenderness and longing washed over me. “Please let this last,” I whispered, more to some divine abstract than to my sleeping boyfriend. “Don't let me be a rebound. I thought I could take it. I don't know if I _can_. I want this.” I swallowed, lost in a surplus of emotion. “I _want _this.”

I stopped talking, and for a few stretched-out moments there was only the sound of our breathing, and the faint thump of his heartbeat where my ear touched his back.

Then he shifted beneath me, opened his eyes, and yawned. I sat back, giving him room to move. “That was great.” He rolled up onto his side and smiled at me drowsily. “You didn't have to do that, you know.”

“I know,” I smiled fondly. “You going to bed now?”

“Yeah...yeah, probably...” He yawned again. “That alright with you?”

“Well, you'll miss the part where Leia passes out a bunch of medals and the music plays. I know how much you like that part.”

“That's...okay...”

I brushed his hair with my fingertips. “You are so cute when you're tired.”

A smile touched his lips. “So are you.” I suspected he was remembering last week, when I'd fallen asleep with my head in his lap.

I got off the bed. “I'll see you tomorrow before you leave, okay? Hopefully the boys don't wake up too early. You know you're getting hauled up to watch them open gifts, right?”

“Why do you think I'm going to bed now?” Despite his words, he actually seemed to be waking back up slightly. “I wish you could stay here with me.”

“Well, see now, I'd sneak back down after I put the kids to bed, but then I doubt I'd wake up in time to get back in my own bed before the crack of dawn,” I half-joked.

“No you wouldn't,” he said, definitely more becoming more alert. “Because we'd make love, and I'm pretty sure you're not putting that off because of the kids or because you don't want to schedule it.”

“Oh?” I asked nervously, sitting back down on the edge of the bed.

Jerry shook his head. “You're scared, aren't you?”

I found I couldn't really deny it. That was surprisingly astute of him. I looked away, focusing on the closet door.

“You're not a rebound, Celia,” he said, and that got me to spin around pretty damn quickly.

“I thought you were _asleep_!”

He only looked slightly abashed. “I was, almost.” He sat up all the way, reaching out to touch me.

“Great.” I looked at the closet again, embarrassed. “Well...fuck. Great.”

“What do _you _have to be embarrassed about?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Oh, I don't know.” I stared at my hands instead. “Being an idiot? I know it's not something you can really control. I know you've been with Beth since you were practically a kid, I doubt you've been with a lot of other people...I mean, it seems kind of like anyone you're with right now would _have _to be a rebound. I should just try to enjoy what I've got right now.”

“And what if I'm not the sort of guy who's any good at, well, dating? What if I'm the kind of guy who latches on and doesn't let go once he finds a woman he likes?”

That....again, more insightful than I expected, which made me feel guilty. Then again, he wasn't exactly making a point I wanted to get on board with, either. “Even if that's true, how is that supposed to make me feel better?” I demanded, my voice hitching with something close to laughter. “That's....Jesus Christ, Jerry!” I started laughing softly, shaking my head. “How is that _any better_?”

“Because,” he said firmly, without shame, and scooted over to put his arm around me. “You're not a rebound. I don't like you just...just because _you _like _me_.” He fumbled over the words as his mouth tried to keep pace with his thoughts. I gazed at him raptly.

“I don't like you because, because I'm _better_ when I'm with you,” he went on, “because I like myself more instead of less. I don't like you because you make me feel wanted or, or because you're not Beth, even though those are all good things and I, I, I....I like the way you say good morning and the way you smile. I like that your jokes are even worse than mine. I like the way you play with your kids, and even the way you get mad at them. I like your stories and your smell and all the things I can talk about with you. I like how you're way out of my league but you make me feel like you're not. How much you give, without a second thought. How, uh, you know, how natural you are, but you're still beautiful. Ho—”

I stopped him with a kiss.

He pulled back after a second, protesting “I wasn't done!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but I'm going to start crying and telling you I love you if you don't wrap it up quick.”

That _did _bring him to a halt. “You...” his voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat. “...love me?”

I laughed and started crying at the same time. “Oh my God, _duh_,” I said, and pressed my lips to his. This time he didn't protest.

*

A week into the start of the new year, Jerry got called for an interview. It wasn't big, just a sales associate position, but it was relatively respectable, didn't seem to be populated with employees ten years his junior, and had a decent salary outside of commissions. In short, he felt he could do it without hating himself, and I was completely behind the idea. I wouldn't be able to rely on him to keep the house acceptable or watch the kids in a pinch anymore if he got the job, but he needed money and he needed to see that he could still do this sort of thing.

I didn't really _expect _him to get it, but I thought there was a pretty good shot. Especially if he went there with his confidence up. In what I really hoped was a stroke of genius and not a mistake, I got up early and made some apple oatmeal muffins, accompanied by sliced apples, to go with breakfast. When he came upstairs, half-dressed, for a cup of coffee, he stopped. He stared at the food. He stared at me, and raised an eyebrow. He looked back at the food again. “Apples, eh?” he asked with a nervous laugh.

I shrugged, pretending I had no idea what he was talking about. “I was hungry for apples.”

“Don't play me, Shorty.”

“Don't talk like you're cool.” I kissed him.

“I'm not cool?” He looked crestfallen.

I rolled my eyes. “_I _think you're cool. But out there, no. Neither am I.”

“Well, that's a shame.” He took a muffin and sat down at the table.

I joined him with my coffee. The kids went back at school today, and I really needed to get them out of bed, but for now I wanted to enjoy the quiet. “This is nice,” I remarked.

“Yeah, the coffee's always good,” he agreed distractedly, poking at his phone.

I didn't correct him. It was a nice little compliment, and if he needed to play a pointless game or read the news to keep from stressing out, so be it. I drank my coffee quickly while checking my e-mail and shooting furtive glances at my boyfriend, and then left him to it while I went to wake the kids.

By the time I had everyone (including myself) dressed and ready for the day, Jerry was looking sharp in a tie and jacket. He also looked antsy and nervous. I pulled him aside while the kids were getting their shoes on. “You look great,” I told him sincerely. “And you got this.”

“Do I?” He tugged at his collar. “Maybe I should just...”

I stilled his hand with my own, re-straightening his tie. “You got this,” I repeated firmly. I jerked my head toward the remaining apple slices. “You have good ideas, Jerry. Just because not everyone sees it right away doesn't mean you shouldn't believe in them.”

“You...you think?” He sounded like he wanted to believe me, but there was a telltale crack in his voice.

I kissed him soundly. “I don't sleep with losers,” I whispered, making sure the breath of the words tickled his ear. “And I'm sleeping with you today, regardless of how this turns out.”

I leaned back in time to see the look on his face, and it was absolutely worth it. Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, I leaned back in, pressing my body against his. “_Because_, Jerry, you make me hungry for apples,” I went on, directly into his ear. “And...other things.” I let my hand drift over the front of his pants, so light it could almost have been an accident. Almost. I kissed him on the cheek, slowly, trying to imbue it with everything I was imagining. “I took the afternoon off.”

I let my head fall down to his chest, and pulled him into a tight hug. “I believe in you.”

At that point the kids were waiting expectantly, so I gave him one more quick hug and picked up my purse. “See you later,” I told him with a wink, and shepherded the kids out to the car.

I didn't hear anything all morning, so I focused on my paper-pushing at work. I'd meant what I'd told him earlier, that we were going to take advantage of this afternoon no matter what happened with his interview, and my excitement made it very hard to focus on office stuff. I was anxious though, too. I enjoyed cheering him up, and sex would be a satisfying way to do it—but the experience would undoubtedly be more fun if he was already in a good mood.

Still without hearing anything, I was definitely feeling nervous when I headed home at 12:00. I'd made a mistake with the apples. I'd put too much pressure on him by bringing sex in. So many mistakes. Oh God, I hoped he wasn't a total mess. I tried telling myself that it had gone fine, but also tried formulating encouraging and sympathetic speeches to give him. At least there was still the afternoon to look forward to together, right? Boobs were a good booby prize.

The front door was unlocked. I dropped my purse and looked around. “Jerry?”

No answer. I was about to start downstairs when he snuck up behind me from the kitchen, wrapping his arms around me from behind and nearly lifting me off my feet. “You called, milady?”

Laughing, I struggled in his arms so that I could turn and face him. “Let me go, you dork! I'm not a lady!”

He released me only to spin me around and pull me back into his arms, facing the right way. He was smiling.

“I take it it went well?” I asked, trying to contain my grin.

“I _nailed_ it,” he crowed. His hands tightened on my sides, and his voice darkened. “And now I believe I'm going to nail _you_.”

That was all it took to get my heart pounding. “Yes, please,” I said, feeling suddenly weak in the knees. “I'm all yours.” I moved my hands up behind his neck, both to support my trembling legs and to pull him down for a kiss.

“Really?” he asked, and his mixed surprise and uncertainty, even after I had left no room for doubt, set all sorts of music playing in my heart. 

“What do I have to do to convince you I want you?” I asked, and started kissing his neck and shoulders. “By the way, I love that you're still dressed up.” I slipped my hands under his jacket, tugging at his shirt to untuck it. “Very good look.” I kissed the bottom of his jaw. “Hot.”

I tipped my face up toward him, and this time he kissed me back enthusiastically. I moaned faintly in the back of my throat and grabbed his butt. “Why don't we adjourn to the bedroom?”

“Mmm.” He buried his face in my hair, kissing behind my left ear. “Which one?”

“Your choice.” My breath caught with desire as his lips found my throat. “I could care less as long as I get you.”

“Oh, you'll get me,” he promised, and I could feel the truth of that from the erection pressing against me. “You're getting all of me.”

“Good,” I choked out, running my hand across the front of his pants a lot less ambiguously than I had done this morning. The shape felt right under my hand. I wanted it in me so much, my breath was catching in my throat. I moved my hand out of the way so I could press my pelvis up against him instead. “We can do it right here on the floor, I don't care.”

He kissed me fiercely, sliding his hands up under my blouse, and for a few minutes all I knew was the taste of his mouth, the pressure of his hands, and the struggle to stay on my feet.

Eventually, we made our way downstairs. I unbuttoned my top, feeling both impatient and shy. He made me forget about both when he fit his hands around my bare waist. It created just enough downward pressure that I sat on the edge of the bed, and he leaned over to kiss me down onto my back. I folded my arms around his shoulders and responded urgently.

“Excuse me, miss,” he stopped to ask, and my body responded to the timbre of his voice. “Are you hungry for apples?”

I could have told him it had been a long time since I was a _miss_. Instead I felt my heart surge in happiness, and slid my hands up the front of _his _shirt and then down to his belt. “Oh,” I purred, “I _am_.”

He kissed me again, leaning over and claiming the work of undoing his pants as I worked frantically to wiggle out of my own without breaking contact with his mouth. He finished first, and after standing up to step out of his, he kindly pulled mine the rest of the way off my feet. He'd never seen me naked before, and maybe I should have felt more self-conscious, but the way he looked at me before touching me again was enough to still any doubts I might have had.

His body language persuaded me to stay relatively still as he explored all my bare skin with his hands and mouth. My legs fell open invitingly. My back arched. I whimpered his name with longing, and again with increasing urgency. I found I couldn't take it anymore, and reached down to close my hand around him. He made a soft sound of approval as I moved my grip carefully up and down, and he did what I wanted and moved his hips forward. I angled mine up to guide him, not that he needed any help. My head tipped up and my fingers dug into his back as he moved into me for the first time.

I pulled in a sharp intake of breath. He moved backward and then in again, deeper, and the air came out of me in a groan of affirmation: “Yeeesssss.”

My hands shifted to his head, directing his face back so I could kiss him again, and he started to find his rhythm. Part of me had expected him to go too fast, because we weren't used to each other's styles yet and he'd be over-excited or trying to somehow impress me. But no. His thrusts were slow enough for the pressure to build, but not so as to allow for boredom or reprieve from the waves of pleasure.

They started like the waves lapping the shore of a small lake on a still day; beautiful and constant, but hardly overwhelming. They mounted slowly, the unremarkable becoming the inescapable, the inescapable becoming the indescribable. I was panting, peppering his neck and chest and mouth with kisses, rocking my hips back and forth against him, as the waves of pleasure gathered momentum.

He couldn't possibly have failed to notice my enjoyment, but it was still fantastic to hear him murmur, voice tight with poorly contained excitement, “Yeah, you like that?

I moaned and nodded vigorously. Seeing my sincerity, hearing the way my moans escalated as he worked in me, undoubtedly feeling how I tightened around him—in short, knowing that he was doing a damn good job—seemed to please and encourage him.

“Yeah,” he grunted again softly, in a way that probably shouldn't have been sexy but under the circumstances made my toes curl with delight. He was breathing hard, too, and his tangible excitement was incredibly hot. “Yeah, that's...mm...you...apples. Mmm...Celia.”

“Jerry,” I groaned in response. “Oh God, oh God, Jerry, _yes_!”

“Yes,” he returned, the word strangled, and I could feel him trembling against me. I wound my fingers in his hair, willingly losing myself in the sensations of closeness and ecstasy. “Oh, Celia...that's...mmm. Are you...hungry...for apples?”

“Yes,” I shouted out, as much from the force of my orgasm as in answer to his question. “Yes!”

He didn't seem to mind. Even through the haze of my own spreading bliss, I could feel him cresting. “Hungry,” he repeated, and I fleetingly wondered if he even knew what he was saying. “For,” he muttered, sweat standing out on his brow. With a triumph of will I made my hips keep moving with him, rather than freezing up like they wanted to. “Apples!” he exclaimed breathlessly, pitch rising, letting me hear his climax as well as feel it.

I came again, before the first one had really ended, and cried out incoherently with the fresh rush of pleasure. Jerry moaned in unmistakable satisfaction, relaxed, and rolled off of me.

We both took a moment to catch our breath. I was surprised at how hard my lungs were working. When I felt somewhat recovered, I rolled on my side toward him. “Please tell me you enjoyed that as much as I did.”

His slow smile was teasing, almost predatory. “I don't know, how much _did _you enjoy it?”

I laughed softly and wiggled closer. “Very much.” I kissed his shoulder. “I love you, you know.”

He folded his hands behind his head, but turned his gaze toward me. “I think I love you, too.”

It wasn't the most romantic declaration, but I squealed happily and threw my arm over him. “Seriously though, that was great.”

He nodded thoughtfully, almost to himself. “It _was_, wasn't it! It, uh...I don't think I realized what I'd been missing.”

“So you'd be willing to do it again?” I asked, teasing.

His lips twitched like he was thinking of something clever or poetic to say, but in the end he settled for “Yes. Emphatically.”

“Yes!” I repeated him, balling my hand into a tiny victory fist-pump.

“Does that mean I get to come sleep upstairs?” he suggested slyly.

I gave him a lying-down hug, wrapping one of his legs between my knees and squeezing his chest with my arm. “That sounds wonderful.”

Jerry looked smug. I figured he'd earned it, and found it cute. “That's not the only thing that's wonderful.”

“Oh?”

“They offered me the job today.”

“To_day_?” I was so surprised I sat up. “I knew it had gone well but I thought, you know, they'd have to check with your references and make sure you weren't secretly wanted by the CIA or whatever it is they do.”

“Technically, yes,” he agreed. “But they're not going to find anything I haven't already told them, and they said as long as the background check went through I had the job. They asked when I'd be available to start.”

I shrieked quietly with joy, and flung myself on top of him again. “That's amazing! That's a_maz_ing! Congratulations! How do you feel?”

“You know, pretty good,” he preened. “I feel like it's been a pretty good day.”

“We ought to go out to dinner to celebrate,” I decided. “Should I find a sitter, or do you want to all go?” I paused. “Or should I make something special?”

He brought one arm down from behind his head to wrap around my waist. “You already did that this morning.”

I couldn't contain my grin. “It worked, then? You believed in yourself?”

“Nnn....not exactly. But right before I went in I was thinking about everything you said, and I knew _someone _believed in me.”

“So I helped!” I was ecstatic. “So where are we going for dinner?”

“You don't think...” Jerry's brow furrowed, and I propped myself up on one elbow to fret.

“What is it?”

He shook his head. “No, it's silly. It's just...well, you know. It feels sort of like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like things are going _too _well.”

“Sometimes the stars just align right.” I shrugged. “I see what you mean, I do. But try to let yourself enjoy this for a little bit, eh?”

“I was planning on it.” He pulled me into a kiss.

“We still haven't decided how we're celebrating,” I objected.

“Speak for yourself,” he told me, and smiled.

*

I should have listened to Jerry. I should have believed him, that things just couldn't go that smoothly in his world. But I loved him, and I wanted to believe he could have good luck for a change. That we had a chance of being happy.

I mean, I loved him. He was falling in love with me. My kids adored him, and he liked them a lot. We finally consummated the relationship, and it was great. He got a job that he was excited about. Life was really, really good.

For about two hours.

Why couldn't we just have gone out for ice cream instead? All of us _loved _ice cream.

Instead, I phoned in a favor and got a babysitter at the last minute, and we dressed up and went to a nice restaurant.

It was lovely. We were still drunk on each other from two rounds of sex earlier, and the open bottle of chardonnay on our table was not helping the cause. Not that we wanted the cause to be helped. We were behaving ourselves enough that we weren't going to get kicked out, and weren't getting too much side-eye from the other customers, so why shouldn't we whisper stupid jokes and feed each other pieces of food and giggle? Hell, we were adorable. I was profoundly happy, laughing till my face turned pink over Jerry's recounting of the previous Christmas, enjoying a truly excellent appetizer, and feeling pretty in a black dress I'd pulled out of the closet for the occasion.

Then, out of nowhere, it turned into a bad sitcom.

Jerry stopped talking mid-sentence, face freezing, and then turned turned to me with a mix of horror and glee in his face. “It's _Beth_.”

I felt my shoulders suck up tension like a sponge in a pool, and turned my head slowly in the direction he was staring. It was, indeed, his soon-to-be-ex-wife. A good-looking guy with shaggy blonde hair was pulling out a chair for her on the other side of the restaurant. “So it is,” I remarked, my lip curling slightly. “Do you know the guy?”

_His _lip curled, too. “Davin,” he growled. “From her work. I always knew there was something there...”

I lifted my eyebrows at that idea. “You don't think this is a first date? Or a work thing?”

His eyes had narrowed as he watched them. “Look at the dress she's wearing,” he snapped at me. “Does it _look _like a work thing?”

I shrugged uneasily, silently licking my wounded feelings. “What does it matter? You guys are finished anyway, right?”

“It _matters_ because I want to know how much of an _idiot_ I was,” he said angrily.

“Why?” I asked simply, and he blinked. I reached across the table and took his hand. “I like where we are now, don't you? You don't know anything. And even if they _were _having an affair all this time, so what? You want to know so you can punish yourself for not finding out? If you _had _found out, you wouldn't have split up when you did, and you might never have met me.”

He blinked again. “You know, that's actually...that's a good point.”

I smiled encouragingly. “Look, I was having a nice time. But you're not going to be able to relax and enjoy yourself again as long as she's here, are you?”

Reluctantly, he shook his head.

I sighed, but not angrily. “Okay. Then let's flag down the waiter and get the bill. Think they'll let us take the bottle of wine to go?”

“No, wait!” He grabbed my wrist. “We _were_ having fun. I...” He hesitated, but plunged ahead. “I know it's shallow and petty, okay. But would it be so awful for her to _see _us having fun?”

Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes. “I'm not putting on a show for your ex, Jerry.”

“It wouldn't have to be a show! Just...keep doing what you were doing.”

“While you make sure she notices how happy you are?” I crossed my arms over my chest, and tried not to look as stricken as I felt. “I thought you said I wasn't a rebound.”

The words caught in my throat. My face must have been even more of a giveaway, because when he glanced back at me from staring at Beth, his face crumbled. “Oh, crap. Oh shit. Oh, no no no.” He waved his hands helplessly, and I felt a flash of irritation with him that came mostly from the pain stabbing at my heart and my own anger with myself for going ahead with something I _knew_ would end like this.

“Celia.” He got up to kneel in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I shook my head, trying not to cry, refusing to look at him. “I know. I screwed up. I get it. I...it was stupid. I...I do stupid things. And...I guess maybe I get a little vindictive sometimes. But it doesn't mean I don't love you. I want to be _here_, okay?” Finally, I looked at him. His face was so earnest, so desperate, I felt the anger drain out of me. “Let's go home, alright? Beth can do what she wants. I've got you. D...don't I?”

I sniffled and threw my arms around him, sliding off my chair into an awkward hug. I nodded into his shoulder.

“We're okay?” he asked into my ear. “Really?”

I nodded again, recomposing my face. “I probably overreacted. It just hit me wrong,” I said, finally pulling back to look at him. “I love you, too.”

He kissed me sweetly and gently, in a way that didn't feel anything like showing off for an audience. It felt like us. I was smiling when I pulled back, though I was slightly confused by the smattering of applause around us. We stood up together, and the applause got a little louder. Oh, dear God. They were applauding for _us_. Someone said “congratulations” and I shot a glance at Jerry, trying not to look completely perplexed. He raised one shoulder in a shrug, clearly having no more clue than I did.

He got me back into my seat and reclaimed his own. He didn't look over his shoulder a single time to see if Beth was watching, and my heart fluttered happily.

“So,” he said, a little too heartily after the unpleasantness, “do we pour another glass of wine, or do you want to blow this joint?”

I stared at him, felt my mouth twitch, and started to snicker. I grinned. He looked heartily relieved. “Honestly? How about we just go home and wat...ohgod.”

“What? What it is?”

I ignored him, rechecking the facts in my brain to make sure I wasn't mistaken. “Oh shit,” I said, and started laughing again. He gave me a puzzled look, and I leaned closer, dropping my voice. “Jerry. They all think we just got _engaged_.”

“_What?_ No they don't! They just...oh...ah.” I saw him piecing it together the same way I had, from an outsider's perspective. We'd been enjoying our dinner. Suddenly, he went down on a knee in front of me. I started crying, nodded several times, and we kissed. “Think they'll comp us a bottle of champagne if we fail to correct them?”

“Maybe, but I'd feel guilty.”

He sighed, disappointed. “Let's get our check, then.”

I waved the idea away. “We can't leave _now_. We'd disillusion all these poor people who think they just saw something beautiful.”

“But you...you wanted to leave.” Poor Jerry, he looked so confused.

I nodded. “And I'd still rather go, but it would feel awkward if we do it right now. Let's at least have another glass and wait for the waiter to come back. I don't feel like making any more scenes, you know?”

“Makes sense,” he agreed, and stood to refresh my wine glass. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry.”

I shrugged, feeling more forgiving and reasonable now that the scary moment had passed. “So am I. I can see the satisfaction in parading me in front of your ex. I could even, given the right circumstances, take it as a compliment.” I smirked as he nodded eagerly to that, but then I got serious again. “But it's just...it's a little too soon. I guess I just need to feel a little more...secure, I guess? You were married to her a long time. You've known me six months.”

“And,” he retorted, turning on the charm and raising his glass to me, “the past six months have been way, _way _better than the past sixteen years.”

“Yeah, it was a barrel of fun for me, too,” said a female voice acidly, and both our heads snapped sideways to see Beth standing beside our table. Fuck. “_Thanks_, Jerry. Nice to know you can forget your own family so quickly.” She turned her glare on me. “You know he can't really marry you, right? It's all just a play to get my attention.” She sniffed and looked down her nose at us both. “Well, fine, Jerry, it worked, you have my attention now. You could have just picked up the phone, you didn't need to fake a proposal in front of a whole restaurant.”

Suddenly, Jerry looked smaller, and very tired. “Would you have answered, Beth?” he asked, almost rhetorically. “Anyway, I wasn't _trying _to get your attention. The whole thing was just...” He halted, looking around, “Where'd your boyfriend go?”

Some strong emotion flickered over her face, too quickly to be identified. “So you _were _watching us! Davin's in the bathroom, and he's not my boyfriend.”

“Ha!” Jerry huffed out a quick, hard laugh of victory at that. Now that she was right here, picking a fight with him, I suppose I couldn't really blame him for a bit of gloating. We were actually happy, and it was starting to look like she wasn't. 

I smiled sweetly up at her. “Would you like to join us? We're out celebrating Jerry's new job.”

“What?” she demanded, eyes flashing. She rounded on Jerry. “Really? You finally got one?”

He looked anywhere but at her, but he didn't seem ashamed, either. “Most people would just say congratulations,” he said mildly.

“I...” she actually faltered, looking between the two of us. “Really? You did?” He nodded, and she deflated. “Oh. Well, congratulations. You...” Her lip twitched, but she finished the sentence pleasantly enough, “You look like you're having a nice time.”

If a smile could be vindictive, Jerry's certainly was. It was all I could do not to flinch. “We are. I'm actually doing really well. How are Summer and Morty? Am I still picking them up Sunday morning?”

“Yes.” She smiled tightly, but her eyes flashed. “Everyone's great. I'll let you get back to your dinner.” She turned on her heel. “See you Sunday.”

When she'd retreated to her own table, I raised my eyebrows at Jerry in amusement. “How rude. She didn't even say goodbye to me.” I took a dainty sip of my wine. “Okay, I apologize. It probably makes me a bad person, but that was actually totally fun. Now let's publicly make out and talk loudly about how much my family loves you.”

“But your family's never met m....ohhhhh.” He gave me a grin that could have melted steel.

I rubbed my foot against his leg under the table. “Well now that we're official and all, we're really going to have to change that.”

The part that was either really sad or really great, depending on how you looked at it, was that we knew we were completely pissing off Beth from across the restaurant, but we weren't putting on a show at all. We were genuinely enjoying ourselves. And in my opinion at least, that made it beautiful.

*

Dinner was Thursday. Thursday night, he shared a bed with me for the first time. Friday afternoon, he got the official phone call offering him the job, and agreed to start a week from Monday. Saturday, we went to an indoor mini-golf course with the kids, and he promised to teach us real golf the following summer. Sunday morning, he headed out to spend the afternoon with his own kids, and I rolled up my sleeves to do some cleaning while the boys went sledding with my friend Jill and her kids.

So when someone rang the bell, I was the only one home to answer it. They were lucky I wasn't running the vacuum yet, I thought as I moved through the house, or I wouldn't even have heard them. I opened the door, wondering who it was. I was pretty sure most missionaries were in church, and I hadn't ordered anything that might arrive via overnight post. Maybe Jerry had? Or maybe it was--

Rick Sanchez. Didn't see _that _one coming.

He stood there on my front porch like it was the most natural thing in the world. I was so surprised I couldn't even appear angry, though I could feel dislike and rage curling up in my chest. How _dare_ he turn up here? What did he want with _me_, anyway? And why had he parked a fucking _spaceship_ in my front l....


	2. TWO

I woke up cramped from God knew how long slouched over in a hard seat, with no real memory of losing consciousness. I rubbed my temples, then my stiff neck, and looked around to try and figure out where I was and what the hell I'd done to get there. There was a window next to me. Also, one behind me. And on the other side. I was in a car of some kind, and it was nighttime. It definitely wasn't Jerry's car. Okay. That was probably not good.

There was a vaguely familiar form in the driver's seat, surrounded by a halo of white hair, and memory started to flicker. I looked out the nearest window again. It wasn't dark out there because it was night. It was because we were _in fucking space_.

I moaned in terror, hugging my my knees tight to my chest and looking anywhere but out the windows. My thighs. They looked nice and safe. I tucked my head up against my knees, forming myself into a nice safe little ball.

It was absolutely pointless, and only made me feel slightly better. But staring at my legs helped me collect my thoughts, and I reached the very logical conclusion that I was being kidnapped. Sure, that sent a fresh wave of terror through me, but it also made me angry. Because I knew exactly _who _was abducting me, and there were only a few possible explanations as to _why._

“So you're not big on space,” Rick asked conversationally, and I wondered how long he'd been aware I was awake. Probably from the second I opened my eyes, dammit.

I swallowed hard on my fear, trying to summon some rage in its place. “I'm not big on waking up in the middle of _anywhere _I didn't choose to go,” I said tartly. “But no, as a matter of fact, I am _not _big on space. Or heights at all, really.”

“Space isn't the same thing as flying at all,” Rick said dismissively, and belched. I felt my nose wrinkle. That was good. That meant my fear was subsiding, if I could react normally like that. “I mean, like, if I ejected you from the ship right now, you wouldn't fall. You'd just explode.”

“Oh,” I said in a very small voice. Never mind, still scared. “Is...is...” It was embarrassingly difficult speaking over this giant chunk of fear in my throat. “Is that what you're going to do?” Once I got the words started, they came easier, but my pitch also rose. “For what? I've never done anything to you! You can't just...just kidnap people and...” My throat tightened again, and I concluded by whispering “fuck” in a very tiny voice.

“Nope,” Rick said cheerfully. “Not going to hurt you at all. Cause you're right. You haven't done anything to me. In fact—” Briefly, he glanced back my way. “If it was just me, I'd say you're more than, than welcome to him. You're actually doing the rest of us a favor, as far as I'm concerned.”

“But it's not up to you,” I extrapolated. “So, what, Beth's decided now that Jerry has a job and a little confidence she wants him back, and I'm an obstacle?”

Rick burped and nodded. “That's pretty much it. I know, it's sad. She, she could do so much better. I really had high hopes for her this time. But you, you kinda messed things up. You had to go and make him seem almost worthwhile for a few minutes there. What's up with that with women, anyway? If someone else wants something, it's auto, automatically good somehow. That's just dumb.”

Enough anger flared up in me to momentarily quell the fear, even though a part of me was just continually screaming _You're in space, you're in space _in the back of my head. “So it's _my _fault you're now abducting me? Excuse me, _no_. It doesn't work that way. Jesus Christ, how do you live with yourself? What the actual fuck!”

“Hey, hey, don't shoot the messenger.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. I shrieked and covered my eyes. Rick laughed. “You think I'm gonna hit something? Space is busy, lady, but it's not _that _busy, know what I'm saying?”

This sent a fresh wave of hysteria through me. I gripped the edges of my seat furiously. “Your daughter is fucking _psychotic_! If she wanted Jerry so much, she shouldn't have divorced him!”

He held up on finger. “Hate to get all nit-picky, but officially I think they're still only separated. Divorce hasn't, hasn't gone through yet. Anyway, take it easy. I told you I think you're right, but you know how it is. I've gotta—” Burp. “--take my kid's side here.” He paused. “She didn't just go straight for this, you know. She tried the boring way first.”

“What, actually apologizing to him? No she didn't.”

“Yes she did,” he disagreed without malice. “She visited him two days ago while you were at work. Tried to talk him into giving it another shot.”

It felt like I had ice inside me, spreading out thin freezing tentacles. Jerry had never mentioned that to me. That must mean that...that..._oh._ The ice melted. “It didn't work,” I said with the first smile I'd managed since coming to. “He turned her down.”

Rick nodded. “There must be something really special about you. Some special, uh, loser pheromones, or something. He thinks you're great.”

“And Beth doesn't even respect him enough to _accept _that?” I demanded, trying to stay angry because then I couldn't wallow in being millions of miles away from everything I'd ever known.

Again, he shrugged. “Relax. No one's gonna hurt you. This is gonna work out...” He paused to take a swig from his flask. Wait. Was he driving _drunk _in _space_? The screaming voice in my head switched over from _you're in space you're in space _to _you're going to die you're going to die._

“... the best for everyone, you'll see,” Rick continued without batting an eye. “You'll like this place. It's, it's perfect for people like you.”

So the intent was just to take me to some other planet and leave me, and that somehow made it all okay in his mind? “I have _kids_, you fucking maniac!” I shrieked furiously.

“They'll be fine.” He waved a nonchalant hand as though that could calm me. “I know a real nice family that adopts alien kids.”

It did _not _calm me. “You can't give my kids to _aliens,_” I screamed, ready to tumble out of my seat and start pummeling him. “They have a _mother_, they are not going in _alien foster care_!”

“Fine, fine,” he agreed, completely throwing me for a loop. “I'll bring them to you here. But I'm warning you, you're—” He paused to burp again, though this one I hardly noticed. “--gonna have your hands full.”

What was _that _supposed to mean? Hearing a promise to bring me my kids, coupled with the fact that no one seemed to want me dead, was slightly soothing. That really showed how dire the situation was, didn't it? “And what about Jerry?” I asked heavily, feeling defeated.

“He gets to go back to his home and his family, and resume being a pain in my ass. See? Everyone wins.”

I felt like I might throw up.

Did he really think that? “Do you really think that?” I asked, but the fight had gone out of me. Arguing with this man was like arguing with a child, he was so confident in his sense of superiority. “That taking away your son-in-law's choices, that ripping me away from my home and everything I've ever known, that it's really no big deal as long as no one gets hurt?”

“Cosmically speaking, yeah, I do. You and Jerry, you guys are just, uh, bit players. No offense.”

There really was no point in talking to him. “So how long until we get wherever you're taking me?” I put my forehead back on my knees, resigned.

He burped. “Another ten minutes, max.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, and focused on my thighs. There was no point in crying, even though a large part of me wanted to curl up and sob. There was no point in trying to escape the spaceship since, as Rick had been kind enough to point out, I'd explode in the vacuum of space. I also wouldn't have a clue how to get home. So I'd wait until we got wherever it was, figure out what exactly they were going to do with me there, and then see if I could find any options.

I thought about home, and my heart ached. Had the boys come back to find no one there? What had they done? Jill would have kept them while she tried to track me down, right? Sure she would. And when she couldn't find me? When _no one_ could find me? What would Jerry do when he got home and I was missing? What would he think? I wouldn't put good odds on Beth telling him she'd had her dad remove me from the planet, but he couldn't possibly just conclude I'd abandoned my own house and family. If he did put the pieces together, would he have any way to retrieve me? It was depressing to think about, because I doubted the answer was yes.

Eventually the spaceship stopped. Rick got out and waited, leaving the door open. I assumed this meant I was supposed to follow him. I briefly considered pouting, making a token act of defiance by remaining inside—but really, what would be the point? And I _wanted _to get out and move around.

As soon as I was moving, Rick headed toward the building in front of us. Interesting—we had to be on some alien world, but the structure I was staring at looked pretty much like any building on Earth. I couldn't tell what it was built _of_, but the shape of the building and doors called to mind some sort of warehouse. I arched my back and rotated my neck around as I walked in, trying to shake off the stiffness of travel. I wondered how long I'd been unconscious.

I don't know what I'd been expecting when we entered the building, but a waiting area, like the lobby of an office, was certainly not top of the list. It probably wouldn't even have been _on _the list, if I'd had the time and forethought to make one. But that's exactly where we were. There were bright, inoffensive abstract paintings hung on the walls, chairs that looked like they could have been borrowed from my doctor's office back home, and a receptionist of some sort seated behind a counter. The only clue that we had actually left Earth at all was that the receptionist looked like a giant lizard—even the clothes and piercings it donned would have blended in back home.

Rick went up to the counter and started talking to it...him? It was hard to tell. I shoved my hands in my pockets and examined the artwork on the walls. Some of them were actually landscapes, now that I took a closer look. None of them were particularly memorable. I did some more stretches. Rick now seemed to be having some kind of argument with the receptionist. It occurred to me that this might be beneficial to me in some way, and moved in closer so I could hear.

“I know you accept others,” Rick was saying, sounded irritated. “Anyway, I don't care what you do with her. Put her to work, I bet she'd be great at it.”

“We have a hiring procedure,” the receptionist objected, speaking perfect English and sounding very bored. “It's a little more advanced than 'taking in strays.'”

“_I_ brought her to you, doesn't that count for anything?” Rick demanded, and got a shrug in return. I was starting to feel both hopeful and amused. Maybe disposing of me wasn't going to be as easy as he'd thought. Ha! But then...if this failed...what was to say he wouldn't find an option I liked less? This place at least felt somewhat sane to me.

Wait a second, was I settling already? Like I was actually going to _stay _here? No! _No! _Fuck that shit. I was going to get home. I just had to find the best way to do it. Or, you know..._any _way to do it.

“Look, let me talk to Sigma-254,” Rick tried now. “You know, Rick Sanchez? The big guy? Looks exactly like me? Owns this place?”

“He's not available.” The receptionist sighed. “I suppose we can take her for now. There is _some_ precedent. But it'd be probationary.”

“What would she have to do to get it revoked?” Rick said with an easy laugh. “You know, on second, on second thought, I don't want to think about that.”

“Just fill out the paperwork,” the lizard guy said without cracking a smile (though maybe he _couldn't _smile. It was hard to be sure).

Rick glanced over his shoulder to make sure I was still there, flashed me a cheery thumbs up that made disgust and resentment settle over me like a blanket, and started writing stuff on a clipboard.

Another species of alien came through a set of doors. This one reminded me of someone's grandma, though I didn't even have enough alien experience to be sure it was female. What the hell _was _this place? Grandma Alien blinked at me. “Well hello there,” she said in a voice that perfectly matched her appearance. “And who do we have here?”

Rick must have finished his paperwork, because he appeared just behind my shoulder. “This is Celia. She's dating K-16-R's Jerry.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off immediately. He seemed unphased. “Well, uh, take it easy? I'll send your kids on next time I'm out this way. Have a, have a nice life.”

He walked back out the front door, and I was left staring after him with my mouth ajar. By the time I got over the shock and thought to start after him, Grandma Alien had a hand on my arm. “This way, dear,” she said kindly.

I shook my arm free. “What? No! I can't...he can't just...” I deflated. “He's leaving me here.” It was exactly what he'd said he was going to do, but somehow it hadn't seemed possible I would actually wind up stranded on some alien world. I took a deep, calming breath. “Where am I?”

Her face spread in what was unpleasantly, but unmistakably, a friendly smile. “Why, you're at Jerryboree. We've never had a woman before. Why don't you go have some fun while I make some arrangements with my supervisor?”

“Jerry's what?” I repeated, latching some hope onto the name. She'd definitely said “Jerry.”

“Right this way,” she told me again, ushering me through another set of doors.

A familiar face was on the other side of them. My breath caught in my throat, and I launched myself into his arms, wrapping mine tight around his neck and resting my head on his chest. “What are you doing here? What's going on? I was scared I'd never see you again!”

He didn't raise his hands to hold me safely against him, but coughed politely. “I'm sorry. Um...have we met?”

I stepped back, holding him at arm's length and staring in dismay. Six-foot-two, check. Adorable dad build, check. Beautiful hazel eyes, check. Pink golf polo from the left side of his drawer, check. Mouth I'd kissed hundreds of times, check, check, check.

What the _fuck_!

“It's...” I tried not to cry. “It's me, Jerry. What did they do to you? What's going _on_?”

“Who's _she_?” a familiar voice asked from behind me, and I turned around to see...

“Jerry?”

He smiled nervously and stuck out his hand. “Yeah, hi...?” He was wearing his olive and brown polo. I turned to look back at the man I'd just hugged, wondering if I'd lost my mind. In the process, I noticed the rest of the room.

“....Jerry?” I stared blankly as my brain overloaded. They were _all _Jerry. A room full of fifty guys, and every one of them was my boyfriend.

I needed to sit down.

He'd told me about the Multiverse, and about Rick jumping between realities like it was a game. I'd believed him. But this...having all of them together like this, it wasn't something you could be prepared for.

I stepped hurriedly away from the version I'd just embraced. “I'm so sorry. I thought...I thought you were _my _Jerry.”

His brow furrowed politely. “What do you mean, your Jerry?”

“I...” I faltered. Come on, dude, it wasn't _that _hard a concept. “I'm dating Jerry. Back on Earth. Er...” I tried to remember what Rick had just told Grandma Alien. “Dimension K-17 or something?”

“But you're not Beth,” another Jerry objected.

I smiled tightly, trying to be patient. It wasn't _their _fault I'd been dumped here. “Beth divorced him in our dimension,” I explained.

One of them gasped in horror at the mere idea. The others didn't seem particularly shocked, though. Well, it made sense. Their marriage _had _been on the rocks for years, it stood to reason they wouldn't be the happiest couple in any other dimension.

“So where is he?” asked another, this one wearing a snappy suit and sporting a different haircut.

“I...” And I knew, in that moment, that if I tried to explain what Beth had done, they either wouldn't believe me or wouldn't care. All these Jerries were still married to her. Still devoted to her, no matter how undeserving she was. “It's a long story.”

“Hey, no problem.” A second one in his green shirt had started listening in, and offered me his arm graciously. “I'll help you find him.”

“I, uh...thanks.” I smiled nervously, settling my hand on his arm.

“Which way do you think he might have gone?” he asked me. In my boyfriend's voice. With my boyfriend's face. But he wasn't _my _Jerry, and knowing that tore my heart out.

“I'm not really sure,” I managed. “We haven't been here long. Do you feel like giving a lady the grand tour?”

He did a silly little bow, which made me smile despite myself. “My pleasure.”

We walked through a room that looked vaguely like a miniature golf course, only weirder. Our path wound between a giant golf club, an iceberg with stairs leading inside, and what looked like a large playhouse shaped like the _Titanic_. There were Jerries everywhere. Some of them were in their pajamas, and I even spotted one walking around in his underwear. They all looked confused, and I felt bad for them.

“So what _is _this place?” I asked my guide. He didn't seem particularly lost or perplexed, so maybe he knew the lay of the land already.

His expression darkened slightly. “It's where Rick dumps us when we try to come along and supervise what he's doing with our son.” He sighed, and the traces of anger left his face. “But it's not really so bad. I've been here six times now, and really, it's a pretty fun way to spend the day. My first time I was skeptical, but...” He shrugged. “It's not so bad. Morty told me some other dimension's Rick made it, and he at least has some idea what we like. There's golf, and movies, and somehow they got wi-fi in here. There's always food, and the company's good.” He laughed at his own joke before turning his attention back to me. “So what's the long story?”

“Huh?”

He stopped and looked at me with a hint of patronization I never got from _my _Jerry, but he still seemed sympathetic. “Your Jerry's not here, right? Where is he?”

“But...you...” I fumbled, confused.

He nodded. “Yeah, I know, I said I'd help you find him. You looked like you needed an out.” He shrugged, and gave me a half-smile. “And I got to help a lady in distress for a few minutes. So?”

I moved my toe in little circles on the path. “I don't think he even knows I'm here. And I have no idea what the hell's going on.” I looked up at him hopefully, like he might somehow possess the key to my salvation. “Is there a way back home?”

“Oh, sure,” he nodded immediately. “If you leave the building, you're free to find a ride back to Earth. But no one out there speaks English and it's, um...” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked shifty. “It's pretty weird. So we just wait to get picked up. Like I said, it's kinda fun here.”

“So I can just...just leave? Stick out my thumb and head back home?” I stared, unable to believe it'd be that easy.

“Whoa, whoa.” This Jerry pulled his hands out of his pockets to make a calm-down gesture. “It's, uh...” He chuckled uneasily. “It's _weird_ out there. And from the way you talk I'm guessing you haven't done a lot of inter-dimensional space travel?”

“Well, ah.....no,” I admitted.

He smiled. “First time off Earth?”

“Yeah.” I returned his smile, shyly. “Jerry—I mean, _my _Jerry—told me so many stories about trips he accidentally went on or got dragged on or stowed away on. I'm guessing it's about the same for you?”

He shoved his hands back in his pocket and laughed, more easily this time. “I don't seem to get any better with practice, either. Anyway. Ah, er. It's good to meet you.” He pulled one of his hands back out and offered it to me. “Jerry Smith.” He paused to wince, but didn't retract the hand. “And you know that. Of course. But I don't have the first idea what they named the dimension I'm from, so—” He laughed again, once again awkward, and tugged at his collar. “--so I guess you're stuck with 'Jerry.'”

“It's a pleasure, Jerry.” I took his hand, skirting around the mind-numbing weirdness of it all. “I'm Celia.”

“Celia,” he repeated, sounding as if he was testing it out and he liked it. We were now strolling past a large ball pit, the kind you used to find in kids' playlands, only larger. A handful of Jerries were playing in it, and a few were sitting on the slides nearby.

I blushed slightly. This was like kismit all over again, only a hundred times stranger and more complicated. Of _course _I'd like him. Of course _he'd _like _me_. He was Jerry.

But I was already dating Jerry.

Christ, I hoped they gave out medicine for migraines here.

“What's your dimension like, then?” I asked, looking for a quick change of subject.

“I don't know, what's _yours_ like?” he returned.

I nodded. “Yeah. It's hard to know what to describe if you don't know what makes it different in the first place. I mean, do you have any, like...snake people running around? Aliens running the government? Anarchists running the...well no, I guess that wouldn't work, but you know. Is it all post-apocalyptic or anything?”

“No. No, it's, um. It's pretty much just Earth.”

“Oh,” I said. “Mine too.”

“Except in your dimension, you're dating me,” he pointed out, sounding thoughtful again.

“No,” I countered, “I'm dating _my _Jerry. Don't get fresh, mister.”

Momentarily he looked chagrined, then saw the smile I was trying to repress, and we both laughed. “Okay, alright, sorry,” he apologized anyway, still sounding amused. “But I mean, I've never even _met _you...er, until now, I mean. So obviously _something's_ different.”

“Hm, that's a good point.” We walked silently for a minute, as I took in a room full of computer monitors and what looked like the entrance to a cafeteria. “How big _is _this place?”

“I try not to think about it,” he told me frankly.

“Makes sense.” Not very helpful to me, though. “So...hm....did you go to a block party last summer? Right after the school year ended?”

He had to search his memory. “Yeah, I think so. It wasn't very memorable. I was trying to do a little networking, since everyone was all 'get a job, Jerry,' but no one seemed very interested. So I snuck inside and watched TV.” He grinned at me like an errant schoolboy at this admission. “Wait a second, wait. You were _at _that party?”

I nodded and shrugged simultaneously. “At least, in my timeline I was. One of my kids scraped his knee, and I almost bailed early, too...”

We must have been thinking along the same lines. This Jerry's brow furrowed as he considered the implications. “You think...maybe...”

“Maybe my universe is the only one where we both went to that stupid party and stayed for more than half an hour? And that's why we met?” 

“_We _didn't meet,” he reminded me ruefully. “But hey, that's okay! I have Beth. And we're....we're great.”

“Liar,” I said flatly, but a split-second later I added a smirk to soften the blow.

“Hey, you don't know me,” he retorted with a hint of arrogance. “Maybe in my universe our marriage is great.”

“Yeah, but it isn't,” I answered, this time with sympathy. “It's okay, I don't judge.”

He cleared his throat and shoved his hands back in his pockets, which was answer enough. “So, uh. You said you have kids?”

*

What was probably a few hours passed. I didn't have my phone, and there were no clocks to be found, so I had to trust my internal clock instead. New Jerry introduced me to a couple other Jerries, and I sat around watching them try to properly connect a television for a while. Apparently the tint was wrong. I couldn't tell. Eventually one of them gave up and suggested we go golfing instead. Everyone agreed so readily it was weird...but then again, they _were _all Jerry. Made sense they'd agree with each other, right? What would be really weird was if they all started fighting with each other.

I felt a little guilty going golfing, because I'd never been as an adult before, and Jerry had promised to take me in the spring. Going without him now seemed almost like cheating. But all the other Jerries seemed so eager to teach me, and so delighted when I sucked at it, that I found it difficult to refuse. From what I could gather, most of them had about the same golf skills (which, again, made sense) except for one Jerry in his pajamas who for some reason was kicking the snot out of the rest of them. Having someone who was truly terrible in the mix was a boon to all their egos.

And they were so _sweet _as they taught me the proper way to hold a club, the best way to place my feet as I swung, how to follow through. It was a little intimate, too, having a man place my hands on the club for me, and when one of them stood behind me with his arms on either side, helping me feel how to swing..... Oh, I _really _wished it was my Jerry.

After the fifth hole, I joined my little group in a trip to the cafeteria, where I was delighted to find good quality ice cream. In space. Would the wonders never cease? My accompanying Jerries had cereal and turkey sandwiches, but no one seemed to judge me for my giant scoops of rum raisin as a main course. Jerry was right, a lot of things about this place really _weren't_ so bad.

That didn't mean I'd forgotten about my children, though. Or my own Jerry. Or, you know, the fact that I was a prisoner here. Maybe I was enjoying myself more than I'd expected, yes, but I was still trying to stay alert for some tip that would help me get back home.

Besides, these Jerries weren't _staying_. One of the ones who had been fixing the TV with us had gotten picked up by his son shortly after the golf game started, and another one had left just before the fourth hole. The one I'd started to think of as First Jerry, the one who'd taken it upon himself to acclimate me to the place, was still here and doing his best to take care of me—but it was only a matter of time before he returned to his home, too. (Or tried to kiss me. I was starting to worry about that possibility. Was it still cheating on Jerry if it was _with _Jerry? It was, right? Probably. I loved _my _Jerry, but they were so painfully, perfectly similar.)

After “lunch” we resumed our golf game. I alternated between miserably, silently agonizing over what my kids might be doing without me—and having a great time laughing at the terrible jokes a Jerry in a suit was telling us. After I finished losing spectacularly badly, we retired to a room full of computers. I took one for myself, hoping I'd be able to get some message home that way, but apparently not being a Jerry put me at a disadvantage here because I couldn't even check my e-mail. I gave my screen to someone who would enjoy it better, and stood by the exit while I debated leaving the room. It would mean leaving First Jerry and the crew I'd been hanging out with, but exploring on my own might not be a bad thing, either. It was probably just because I enjoyed them, but these guys were distracting. No wonder Rick had told me I'd have my hands full here.

Thinking about Rick still created little tendrils of rage inside me, and I decided to try branching out on my own. I leaned over First Jerry's back to tell him, but he was engrossed in the game he was playing and gave me an “Okay, yeah, cool,” that was so distracted I doubted he'd even heard. Smiling fondly, I went off in search of an escape.

My feet took me back around the golf course, and I marveled again at how big this place was. It was amazing, really, that there weren't more employees supervising the whole thing. Then again, there didn't seem to be any doors that opened onto the outside, either. And I spotted video cameras lurking in the corners of some areas, so someone was probably paying attention. Still, it seemed like the lack of employees could be useful. If only I had some sort of ninja skills or supernatural charisma, I could overpower them and steal a spaceship. Maybe it'd have an autopilot feature. Unlikely, okay, but I wasn't giving up.

I was walking back around the exterior of the ball pit when a comically oversized figure came through one of the doors. It was probably a normal-sized person—or alien—but they were wearing a suit like something you'd find at Chuck-E-Cheese. Even though it wasn't bad, as far as giant bobble-headed costumes on aliens go, it still look me a minute to realize it was supposed to be Beth.

“Jerry,” she crooned into a hidden microphone, and most of the men around me immediately turned their attention to her. “Do you want to come watch a movie with me?” She paused, giving these words a chance to sink in. There was a saccharine, grotesque smile painted on her enormous face. “Who wants to watch _Midnight Run_ with director's commentary on?”

Since Jerry had made me watch that movie months ago, I knew it ranked up there with Star Wars and Titanic for him. This had to be a pretty tempting offer, and most of the Jerries were already starting to nod and move in her direction. They had to know it wasn't really her. They weren't stupid. But it was feeding into what they wanted to imagine their lives were. “First one there gets to adjust the picture settings!”

I gritted my teeth, watching all these nice guys hurrying to jump just because a fake Beth said so. Why did she have this kind of power over them? Did they think they couldn't do any better? Were they just that loyal? What was it?

“I looooove you, Jerry!” she cooed, and maybe it was the fact that my entire life had been uprooted very recently, or that I was surrounded by guys who looked and acted just like my boyfriend but who I couldn't morally make out with, or that if you didn't count my period of forced unconsciousness I'd been up for way more than twenty-four hours, but that was when I snapped.

I ran up there, to the spot she was standing right outside the ball pit, with no clear intent in mind. I was just angry. Angry that I was here, angry that they would fall for this, angry that all these sweet, decent guys would keep letting the real Beth walk all over them. I made it there, panting with exertion but still furious, and was perilously close to swinging a punch at “Beth” when I remembered this was really just some employee. And also that my punches are incredibly weak and untrained.

I turned away from her, and she hurried back in the direction she'd come. I turned and felt dozens of sets of Jerry eyes on me, confused and uncertain. I gestured angrily toward the retreating form of Beth, and demanded loud enough for most of them to hear, “When has the real Beth ever been like this?” There were murmurs, some of them disapproval, some of them agreement. I plunged ahead, letting my righteous anger carry me. “I don't know what things are like in your dimensions, but you all seem a lot like my Jerry, so I'm guessing your Beth is a lot like my Beth. And she's emotionally abusive! You know it but you keep trying anyway, because you're good guys.

“But she doesn't deserve your love! She doesn't deserve your devotion! _You _don't deserve to be treated like a second-class citizen by your own family! You guys are Jerries, and I'm telling you, _you deserve better_! You deserve real love! Real respect! Go home and try for it! Go back and find your Celias!”

In the moment, it didn't occur to me that I'd only met a small percentage of the men I was speaking to, and the rest of them probably didn't even know my name was Celia. At least they were listening to me now. There were a few scattered applause and weak cheers, but mostly they were watching me intently. I had an audience.

“Listen to me,” I exclaimed, opening my arms to this new role and opportunity. “You know what happened in my timeline? Jerry was actually _happy_ making a new, different life with me, and Beth couldn't handle it! She's so fucking sad and petty she couldn't handle it and she asked her dad to get rid of me, that's the sort of person she is! So Rick dumped me _here_ and I can never go back and see the man I love. For what? So she can win him over and go back to making both their lives miserable?

“But you guys!” I spread my arms wide, as if I could hug every last one of them, and raised my voice to a shout. A few employees had returned through the main doors by now, looking unhappy, and I realized I needed to make my point quickly. “You can still leave! Your families are gonna come claim you, and you have a chance at happiness still! The next time Beth looks down her nose at you, remember this! _I love you! _I love all of you, because I know Jerry. I know what's in your hearts, I know what you're capable of! I know—”

What I knew, apparently, was how to get hit by a tranquilizer dart. I did _that _like a pro. I felt the sting, broke off my speech to look down and notice it sticking out of my arm, and had just enough time to crumple to my knees before it took effect.

*

I woke up on a sofa, where someone had at least thought to recline me fully. The room looked plush and comfortable, and there was no sign of anyone named Jerry Smith. In fact, I was alone in the room aside from the man who was quickly becoming my new nemesis. “You know, this is the second time in about a day that you've knocked me out without warning,” I remarked without attempting to sit up.

Rick Sanchez belched. “Wrong. That wasn't me last time, and it wasn't me this time either. My employees did it and _then _called me in, because they didn't know what the hell to do with you.”

“Ah,” I nodded slowly, still not giving him the courtesy of sitting up or looking his way. “So you're not the asshole from my dimension. You're the asshole who owns this place.”

“And you're Celia Thomas of Earth, Dimension K-16-R. Age thirty-five, academic service rep, whatever that means, and mother of two. And, as far as I can tell, the only version of yourself to meet Jerry.”

He had my attention. I turned my head. “Yeah,” he said, noticing my interest. “In about half the dimensions, you're not even alive. Killed in some crash two years ago. In another twenty percent or so, you're still married to your husband. And in the rest of them you and Jerry just, uh, miss each other. I don't know what makes your dimension so special, that you actually ran into the guy, but there you go. Now you're in love, blah blah blah, it's super lame. I'm gonna be having a looooong talk with C-137 about bringing you here. I can already tell you're going to be a giant pain in my ass.”

“Sorry-not-sorry,” I retorted, trying to sound bored.

“Jesus Christ, I can see what you two like about each other,” Rick said with an eye-roll. “I know you think you're doing all of them—” He waved vaguely to indicate all the Jerries. “--a favor, but you're not. All you're doing is fucking things up.”

“Says the asshole.” I knew I was being childish, but I had been scared and angry for what felt like a long time now.

Rick didn't take the bait. “You're a rabble-rouser. You're upsetting the system, trying to stick it to the man. And I respect that. If it was just up to me, I'd, I'd say more power to you. But I'm running a business here, and it only works if I keep all these Jerries safe and complacent. A revolution here would be terrible for business. We got them sedated this time, but I can't let you run around creating Jerevolutionaries wherever you go. Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you're making, how many dimensions you could fuck up? Oh man, C-137 can't _pay_ me enough for this.”

“So you're kicking me out? Sending me home?” I actually sat up, that's how hopeful I was for the span of a few seconds.

It must have been very transparent, because this Rick even looked kind of apologetic as he shook his head. “Don't get your hopes up. That's not exactly convenient right now. There's all this paperwork...luckily I'm not the one who has to do most of it. Point is, I'd love to, believe me, but there are procedures to follow. For now, we'll have to settle for confining you to certain areas of the facility.”

“You're locking me _up_?” I heard the squeak in my voice, and hated it. I didn't want to be this easy to break. But I hadn't even _thought _about the repercussions my Jerry Rights Movement could have on my escape plans. I'd just been feeling and reacting, and working like that I didn't stand a chance against a facility like this. Dammit, dammit, _fuck_. 

“Did I say that?” He sighed and took a hit from a flask in his pocket. “No. We're not. We just fit you with a chip that will stop you if you try to go into the main areas.”

“Stop me how?” I knew it was a loaded question, but I still had to ask it.

“Mild electric shock. It, uh, may make you pee your pants.”

I stared at him. He stared back at me. I squared my jaw defiantly. “And what about my kids? When are my kids coming?”

“Your _kids_? Oh-ho, no way, they're not coming here. _You _shouldn't even be here. Paul Fleishman is one thing, but you gotta draw a fucking _line_ somewhere, am I right?”

I felt like my heart was shattering inside my chest. I _had _to get home. “Who the hell is Paul Fleishman?”

Rick burped. “In some dimensions Beth gets remarried. So he's kinda like you, in reverse. But this place was designed for _Beth's_ tag-along idiots, not Jerry's. I mean, for fuck's sake, what was he even thinking?”

I took one very deep breath, then another. “So you're telling me that my kids are _not _coming, and I'm now a prisoner here.”

“Look, I'd love to sugar coat it for you,” he told me, getting to his feet, “but it'd just be a waste of both our time. But hey, look on the bright side. It's probably not permanent. When I get bored enough, I'll look over the paperwork and find the loophole. Now I got places to be.” Without warning, he shot some sort of laser gun at the floor, making a green portal appear there. He jumped through it; I had barely enough time to consider following him and rejecting the idea before it sealed itself and vanished.

I got up slowly, and looked around the room I was in. It was clearly the office of someone important, but also someone who didn't spend a lot of time at work. A president's office. It had a desk with a cushy rolling chair and pieces of technology I didn't dare touch. It had a filing cabinet, a lamp, a few less comfortable-looking chairs for visitors, and the sofa. There was also a large window. I peeked out through the blinds and saw what looked like a city street with...._things_....moving around. Aliens, I supposed, but they struck me as unnecessarily weird even for aliens. Maybe it was just the darkness between the streetlights. I shuddered and let the blinds snap closed.

This Rick hadn't called anyone in or made me leave before he took his shortcut, so I assumed this wasn't a place he cared much about. No sensitive information in here. It also seemed safe to assume, since I wasn't currently peeing my pants, that this part of the facility wasn't off limits to me. I doubted I'd be able to get back into this office once I left it, but that was a least one piece of knowledge to cling to.

The unfortunate part was that he hadn't bothered to mention how I'd _know _if I was getting near a forbidden area. Did I get any warning, or would I just randomly get a burst of electricity to the brain and fall down? I hoped there would be some sort of indication, but given everything I'd seen so far, my expectations weren't very high. I decided to stay in the office for a while.

His parting remark wasn't anything that instilled a lot of hope in me, but it did give me something else to hang on to. This Rick didn't want me here. He seemed to care more about doing things by the book than the Rick from my dimension, and he wasn't bothered enough by my presence yet to go out of his way to find a solution...but he didn't want me here. That had to be a good thing, right?

I _needed_ a good thing right now. The offhand way he'd said that all the Jerries out there had been calmed down after my speech, that my attempts to motivate them had amounted to nothing... That hurt. Not because of what it had cost me, but because I _wanted _better lives for them. But now they were probably all sitting out there going _Wow, look how much that Beth did to win her Jerry back. She must really love us!_ It was way too easy to imagine. I hoped some of them would remember. I wished I could help them.

And my kids weren't coming. I thought again about what must be happening back home. I wasn't even sure I'd been gone long enough for them to file a police report on me yet, but my family would know something was wrong. My parents would probably come down to join the search and stay with my boys. Everyone would be asking Jerry for ideas on where I could possibly have gone without telling anyone. He'd be so lost, feel so persecuted. Would he still make it to his first day at the new job alright? I liked to think so, but he was so fragile in some ways...

This line of thinking was useless. I was desperately thirsty, maybe as a result of the dart they'd hit me with, and my head was pounding. It stood to reason there'd be refreshments around here somewhere. I remembered my ice cream however many hours ago, and was slightly crushed by the realization that First Jerry was probably gone by now. Heck, even if he wasn't, I'd probably never get to see him again. That shouldn't have hurt, given the magnitude of everything else I'd lost, but it did.

I poked around the office and found a few bottles of water, stashed alongside a few bottles of liquor, inside the filing cabinet. I opened one and gulped half of it down immediately, then went back to the sofa to rest my head and sip the remainder. I wondered where they'd inserted the chip in me; I couldn't feel any incisions, but there was nothing obvious like an electronic anklet on me, either.

I decided to lie down and be miserable for a while. I hadn't had a chance to wallow yet, and maybe a good hard cry and vent would clear my head. But when I thought about it and _tried _to cry, nothing would come. I was too tense to release it. Eventually, when neither tears nor sleep came, I gave up and went to take my risks exploring.

The door clicked shut behind me when I left the office—and just as I'd predicted, even though there was no visible lock, it refused to reopen. I looked left and right, and saw no one. I heard nothing. But there were bright lights at the end of the hall to the left, so I played it safe and turned the opposite way.

I found a bathroom at the end of the hall. Since there were no Jerries to be seen, and I had no idea how aliens peed, it must have been installed for Rick. I wondered whether there were any _real _bathroom facilities. Like, with a shower. Because I was not going to live here indefinitely and not be able to shower. Hell no. They thought I was intractable now, just see what happened when they took basic hygiene away from me!

Trying to mentally leave a trail of bread crumbs, I took a left turn after inspecting the bathroom. This wasn't a hard decision to make, because there was only a solid wall on the right. I passed a few doors as I progressed down the empty hallway. None of them opened. I was starting to feel vaguely spooked. Dear God, were they going to leave me wandering these halls for weeks without a single other human being to talk to? I'd go _nuts_. The Ricks I'd met seemed to be arrogant, cynical, and morally flexible, but they didn't seem intentionally cruel. There must be someone around, somewhere. Maybe I could find that Fleishman guy.

I came to another wall, this time where the hallway branched out both ways into a T. I randomly chose right, and wandered down it. One door did open under my hand, and I found what looked like a tomb for old paperwork. It was filled with shelves of boxes, and filing cabinets lined the space that wasn't full of boxes. I made a mental note in my bread crumb trail, but couldn't think of any use for the place other than hiding.

I went back out and proceeded down the same hallway. Another door lead into what I thought was a kind of garage. I opened it and felt humid air sweep over my face and soak into my skin. I took a hesitant step out, holding onto the door frame as I looked uneasily around.

My hesitancy was what saved me from needing a new pair of pants. About three inches through the door, a sharp tingling started at the base of my neck. When I didn't immediately retreat back inside, it got exponentially stronger, making the muscles seize up from my neck all the way down my back. I was still holding onto the door frame, and used it to fling myself back hurriedly. I wound up sprawled on my ass on the floor, but the pain subsided at once.

Well, that answered my question about knowing when something was out of bounds. It also triggered the tears that had refused to start earlier, and I huddled against the wall sobbing for a while. The shock and pain passed quickly, but now my butt hurt from landing on it hard, and my situation was still a nightmare. Letting it out did prove cathartic, but created a new problem in my complete lack of tissue. I was eventually forced to head back down toward the bathroom I'd found just so I'd have something to blow my streaming nose on.

I blew it several times, and splashed some cool water on my face. My head still ached slightly, so I drank more water from my cupped hands. Then I squared my shoulders.

Right. There must be someone around here somewhere who was allowed to give me the time of day. An exit they'd missed, a room with a bed and a shower, a place to get something to eat, a supervisor to complain to. _Something_.

About an hour passed, and I had two more near-shocks from my nasty little electric chip, but then I hit jackpot.

Well, not _jackpot_ so much as the vague _something_ I'd been hoping for. I found _something_. But hey, that was progress.

The something in question was a room in the basement that didn't seem to get many visits from maintenance or housekeeping. It was near another bathroom, though still no dice on the shower. The room had a TV in it, as well as a card table and chairs, and several vending machines.

It also had half a dozen Jerries in it.

My initial reaction, sadly, was one of fear. Jerries! I wasn't allowed near them! My chip was going to shock me! I retreated hastily, but when I realized there had been no tingle in my spine I dared to move forward again slowly. One small step. Then another. Nope, nothing. For whatever reason, I was allowed in this room.

“What the hell?”

One of them had spotted me, and before I had time to react another one followed his gaze. “Who are you?”

A tired-looking Jerry in a disheveled suit cocked his head to the side. “You're not a Jerry,” he ventured, stating the obvious in a confused tone.

“Er...no...” It seemed safe in there, and they were talking directly to me, but I was still somehow shy about entering the room. “I'm a Celia.” I paused, made a little snort, and started to blush. “I mean, I'm Celia. I mean, I guess I _am _'a Celia' because I exist in a bunch of other dimensions, though Rick told me I died in a lot of them, but anyway I'm the only Celia _here_ which is what I was trying to say and I'm babbling, I'm sorry, this is a terrible introduction. Sorry.” I cringed, baring my teeth in displeasure with myself.

A few of the Jerries exchanged glances of amusement. “She's cute,” one observed with humor glowing in his eyes.

One of the Jerries seated at the card table (with a shaved head, no shirt, and a fuck-the-world set to his shoulders) studied me silently with a hint of a smile before saying “Okay, Celia...but who _are _you?”

“More specifically,” another one chipped in, “what are you doing here?”

I smiled apologetically, and dared to take a step closer. “It's kind of a long story.”

A Jerry in a green shirt, sitting on the bare floor with his back to the wall, shrugged at that. “Sounds alright to me. We're not going anywhere.”

“I...you're not?”

One with a goatee—and cigarette? I'd never seen Jerry smoke!--shook his head and glanced my way with a bitter shine in his eye. “The Jerries out there in the main room will go home. We won't.”

I had no idea how to respond, and curiosity pulled me further into the room. “Can I...am I supposed to ask why not? Or is it...” I was going to say _a touchy subject _but those words seemed to have the wrong connotation to them. After only a brief hesitation I settled on “...off limits?”

The guy wearing just jeans and an undershirt, who already looked miserable, dropped his face into his hands at the question. His friend in the pink golf shirt put a hand quietly on his shoulder, and met my eyes. “It's not a big secret. We're the outcasts. Our families abandoned us.”

“It might not have been on purpose,” said the Jerry in green. “It could be something happened to them. And they _couldn't _come back.” He stared at the floor, and added in an undertone, “But if it comes down to that, I'd rather think they ditched me.”

There was a murmur of consensus from the other men in the room. “That's terrible,” I said, pulling up a chair at the card table as I inventoried them mentally. One in a suit. One in green. One in pink. The one in the wife beater. The bald one, the one with the goatee, the one in a leather jacket. Seven. They all had an aura of neglect and depression about them, but they were also undeniably all Jerry.

Their families had _left _them? “Do you...do you _know_ they're not coming back?” I asked cautiously. I couldn't quite ask it, but what I meant was whether their Ricks had been awful enough to say it right to their faces. I was outraged at what he and Beth had done to _me_, and this seemed somehow worse. He was their _family_, dammit! Daily belittlement infuriated me but was within the normal human range of shittiness. Dumping someone off at an inter-dimensional day care against their will was way out of line, but at least they tried to make it nice and safe and, well...not forever. Permanent abandonment went beyond the pale.

I felt the revolutionary twitching inside me again, and reminded myself sternly that I wasn't cut out of it. I was only a few hours removed from a spectacular failure, in fact.

Jerry-in-the-suit nodded. “I got a look at my paperwork,” was all he needed to say. I fought the compulsion to run and hug him tightly.

“I've been here over a year. If I'm even counting right,” Jerry-with-the-beard added. I clapped my hand to my mouth in horror.

“But...they...they don't even give you _dorm rooms_ or anything?” I demanded, my pitch rising in outrage. “They _know_ you're here long-term and they don't give you a _bed_?” I didn't know whether I wanted to scream or cry at the thought. Not least because it meant I wasn't likely to get one, either.

“Right?” Bald-Jerry exclaimed, sounding almost pleased in his level of validation. “It's ridiculous!”

I nodded forcefully. “Absolutely outrageous. If I could go to the front desk, I'd file a complaint.”

“We've tried that,” Jerry-in-a-jacket sighed.

“Why can't you go to the front desk?” inquired Jerry-in-pink with interest.

I quirked a smile at him. “Because I'm here for the foreseeable future, too, _and _I got a special nifty shock collar to keep me away from the general public.”

That got me a few raised eyebrows. “Who _are _you?” Jerry-in-green repeated, this time with awe.

“Oh, haven't you heard? She's the leader of the revolution,” said a voice behind me. I turned to find yet another Jerry standing in the doorway. This one had what I was coming to think of as the standard haircut, but was wearing a dark button-up shirt open over a white tee and jeans. My Jerry had worn the outfit twice that I could remember, and it looked good on him—but it wasn't common here.

I turned to face him. “I can't tell if you're mocking me or not.”

“Are you kidding? You're all they're talking about out there.” He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “I mean, none of them know who you are or where you came from, but you made an _impression_.”

For some reason, I felt a smile tugging at my mouth. It turned into a soft chuckle, and then a full laugh. I closed my eyes and shook my head, still laughing.

Late-entry-Jerry pulled up the folding chair next to me. “What's so funny, hm, hero?”

I kept shaking my head, at a loss for words. “I made an _impression_,” I repeated, looking from one confused Jerry face to another. “What exactly are they saying, Jerry?”

He didn't seem surprised that I knew his name. But then, why would he? “Oh...just that some crazy lady scared off Beth and started shouting about loving everyone. They remember that you said they can do better than Beth—you did say that?” I nodded, and he continued. “And that nothing was fair, and then you fell down and got carried off by the employees.” He lifted his eyebrows politely. “Sound about right?”

I stared at the ceiling, praying for sanity from a god that probably didn't exist. “Sadly, yes. Though I didn't fall down, they tranqed me.”

He nodded knowingly. “That makes sense.” He stretched his legs out as if he were perfectly comfortable in the folding chair. “I'm kind of sorry I missed it.”

“It was...very impassioned.” I felt my face flush pink. I _had _said I'd loved all of them. It was much easier to say when I wasn't face to face with several of them. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“I think you better tell this story from the beginning, Hero,” Late-entry-Jerry told me.

“Hero, eh?” I asked him wistfully. “The you from my dimension calls me Shorty.”

He cocked his head sideways, considering that. “You _are _pretty short,” he said seriously.

“No,” I smiled, “like 'he's playing you, Shorty,' or 'Shorty's like a melody in my head' or 'Man, my Shorty so hot...'” I trailed off, seeing his utter lack of comprehension. “You don't have slang like that in your dimension?”

He looked at me blankly, though several of the others nodded understanding. “That's a shame,” I said mildly, rolling right past the weirdness, “Because you're really—I mean, he's really—good at using that slang in the funniest ways.”

He continued to look at me blankly, with a tiny crease between his brows. It was cute. “Never mind. Anyhow. Hands up, who wants the long version of the story? I'll do my best to be entertaining.” Shrugs and murmurs of assent filled the room, and several of them even put up their hands. Despite everything, I couldn't help smiling at being in a room full of men so like the one I'd fallen in love with. “Okay. So, it started about six months ago, at this dumb block party I almost didn't go to...”

*

Maybe it was because at least one of them had heard bits and pieces of it in the main area, or maybe it was because being abandoned made them so much more inclined to see the worst in Beth and Rick, but my story was well-received here. I got a little awkward when it came to relating the more romantic parts, and skimmed over the _I know what you look like naked _aspects, but judging from the “aww”s and fond smiles I was getting, the fact that I was in love with Jerry came through loud and clear.

“I never knew there was anyone like you out there,” Jerry-in-pink said sadly when I was through.

“Well, to be fair, maybe there _wasn't_, in your dimension,” I pointed out.

He looked at me with obvious longing. “There is in this one, though.”

I shifted back slightly in my seat, straightening my spine. Part of me wanted to hug him and pour love onto him, because the way he was looking at me was so familiar. But that was exactly why I had to hold back. “Ah, but I'm taken.”

“By a Jerry,” the one in his undershirt pointed out, with a similar look in his eye.

I smiled wryly. “Belonging to one Jerry doesn't mean I'm down to get passed around by all of you, sorry.”

“Doesn't it?” Bald-Jerry asked, leaning in hopefully. “You said you love all of us, right?”

I pushed myself back as far as I could in the chair, feeling my heart thump harder. They were Jerries. I was fairly certain they weren't going to assault me. But they had a point, and I didn't like that.

“Yes,” I admitted, glancing briefly from one to the next, not quite long enough to meet their eyes. “I think I _do_. And I want to help you, so much. But I'm in a relationship back home, and I don't think my Jerry would see it quite the same way.”

“How do you know?” Jerry-with-the-beard asked slyly. “We're him. You don't think we know how he'd feel?”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to get one higher than the other. “So you're saying you'd be fine with your girlfriend dating eight other men, as long as they were all versions of you?”

He pursed his lips, eyes darting side-to-side. “Yyyyyessss?” I laughed, and the tension in the atmosphere faded.

More at ease now, I looked around at each of them more slowly, and smiled. “I wish I could be all your girlfriends. But I've only been here, what, a day? I'm not ready to give up on getting home to my dimension just yet.”

“That's fair,” Jerry-in-pink conceded, looking slightly disappointed. I nodded, and stood up to give him a hug.

He tried to kiss me.

I put my hands on his shoulders, pushing him back at arm's length to stare him down. “Jerry. Cut it out. I can't.”

His shoulders slumped, and he stared at the floor. “You don't understand. Your Jerry, the guys out there—” He waved his hand half-heartedly toward the main rooms somewhere behind us. “--They need love. You're right about that. Beth wasn't always the best at making us feel important or, or special. But, but...I've been here eighteen months. I haven't seen my wife in _eighteen months_. Or, you know, _any _woman. Anyone who's not another version of myself. Anyone who wants to_ touch_ me. And you...you don't know what that's like.” 

“That doesn't make her your blow-up sex doll,” Late-entry-Jerry objected, sounding indignant.

“But she _wants_ to!” He turned back to me with way too much pain and hope in his eyes for someone I'd just met. “Don't you?”

I kept my hands on his shoulders and said carefully. “That depends what we're talking about here. I just met you, dude.”

He spread his hands hopefully. “I'm still Jerry. You knew _him _well enough to sleep with him, right?”

“Whoa!” I exclaimed, and Jerry-with-the-beard lifted his eyebrows.

“You can't just...whoa,” he agreed.

“Sorry!” Jerry-in-pink exclaimed, sounding persecuted, and stepped back from me. “I guess I'll just go sit in a corner, then.”

“Yeah,” Late-entry-Jerry told him, offended. “You _should_.” What was that thought I'd had earlier about Jerries naturally getting along with each other? It didn't seem to be the case here...though given their living conditions, it was no wonder they were getting on each other's nerves.

Jerry-in-a-jacket coughed awkwardly and tugged at his collar. “Sorry about that. “

“He's...not wrong, you know,” Jerry-in-a-suit ventured. “Not about what he, uh, said at the end there, but about how long we've been alone here and what it's like.”

“So, what?” I asked, trying to turn it into a joke. “Am I safe here, or are you all so deprived of human touch I'm going to get jumped the second I close my eyes?”

“What?” squeaked Jerry-in-an-undershirt. “No, of course not!” He cleared his throat. “You're, uh. You're safe.”

I grinned at him. “I thought so. Now am I safe to give you all hugs? Because I am totally down with _that_.”

Jerry-in-pink stayed in the corner, presumably sulking. Jerry-in-a-suit held his palms up in front of him nervously, and I was pretty sure I understood the gesture. He didn't quite trust himself. I smiled sympathetically at him; in a way, it made me want to hug him _more_, because he clearly needed it but was too worried about crossing lines. Honestly, I could relate. I remembered the first time I'd ever hugged Jerry, at that block party, and how quickly a simple hug had escalated. And that was just from natural chemistry and an emotionally closed-off wife. I could only imagine the sort of desire and insecurity running beneath the surface in these guys, practically without any human touch or comfort for months or years. Part of me wanted to listen to Pink, and just spread my legs for all of them.

I _wouldn't_ do that. I couldn't. And most of me was appalled that I'd even had the thought. But it was there.

And it wasn't going to stop me giving these Jerries what I _could _give, just because I was a little scared of my own thoughts. I stood up, stepped right over to Jerry-in-an-undershirt, and put my arms around his shoulders as I leaned in close. His hands circled my back, pulling me up against him gently, and I tightened my embrace. It felt good. It felt right. It felt just like Jerry. I leaned my head against his chest, shut my eyes, and let myself imagine briefly that I was back home.

When I stepped back, he let out a shaky little sigh and seemed embarrassed, looking anywhere but right at me. I patted him on the arm and turned around to step into the arms of Jerry-in-green. It was almost the exact same experience, though he dared to rest his chin on top of my head and sigh in relief while still holding me. I went through the remaining four, finishing with Late-entry-Jerry. Every one of them was similar—the way they felt was just the same, but the sound they made or where they placed their arms varied slightly. I don't know how it was possible, but it was both nerve-wracking and relaxing. I dithered for a minute when I was done, but then I walked over to where Pink was sulking and wrapped my arms around him from the back, giving him a quick hug of reassurance. “I don't hold it against you,” I whispered, and retreated to the table.

“So tell me something,” I said, sinking into the uncomfortable chair. “Are you guys, like, banished here? Or can you come and go to the main areas?” I looked at Late-entry as I spoke, because his earlier comments suggested he'd been out there recently.

“Huh? Oh, ah, no. Um, we can go wherever we like!”

“And you like it...here?” I wrinkled my brow, showing that I thought he was crazy.

Bald-Jerry shrugged. “It's not great, no. But there are so many other Jerries coming and going out there. So many of them asking, you know, what's going on here. It gets really old.”

“I hate it,” Undershirt admitted, staring at the backs of his hands. “It's just a reminder...” He trailed off, but he didn't need to complete the thought for me to get the gist. If I'd been abandoned, I wouldn't want to watch all the other versions of myself happily enjoy things for the first or second time and then leave with their families.

Suit nodded. “At least this place is our own.”

That was...so sad. I sighed. “I _really _wish I could campaign for some dorm rooms or something for you.

“Well, uh...” Green laughed nervously. “Mi casa es su casa...?”

That got him a real smile. “Thanks. Which square of the floor is my new home, then?”

“Not that one,” Jacket said at once, pointing to the corner near the TV. Beard glared at him, and he shrugged defensively. “What? That's my spot, and she asked!”

“Not that spot either,” Bald said after a moment's pause, pointing to an area along the opposite wall.

A few more of them spoke up, now that it wasn't going to make them look bad. I couldn't help laughing a little bit. “How about right by the door?” I asked. “Anyone already have dibs on that?”

“Um...which side of the doorway?” Undershirt tentatively lifted his hand.

“Either,” I told him, and that's how I wound up with the spot to the left of the door to put my back against at night. Whatever “night” was here. I almost didn't want to choose a spot to sleep, because that was like admitting defeat. Admitting I was going to be staying here a while.

Maybe forever. Rick had said he'd find a way to get rid of me when he got bored enough, but that wasn't a whole lot to hang on to. And now I didn't even have free run of the place, to find a way out.

I _did _have eight new friends willing to keep me company and bring me information, though. Also, food. After quizzing me about the nature of my invisible shock collar, Late-entry connected the mental dots and realized I couldn't go to the cafeteria and thus must be hungry. I was actually rather impressed by this jump in logic; Jerry wasn't stupid, but he didn't do well with subtly. At any rate, Late-entry offered to make a food run and I gladly accepted. While he was doing that, the other Jerries started to slowly share the circumstances of their arrival.

Beard had threatened to tell his Beth about some of the shadier adventures Summer and Morty had joined Rick on, and the next thing he knew he was being checked in at the front desk here. Initially he'd stayed in the main area, but as the days turned to weeks he'd lost interest in most of the scheduled activities. He'd gone to the front desk and made demands, and he'd always been treated very politely there and gotten lots of reassurances—but nothing ever came of it. He'd been here since last fall.

Jacket had been dropped off here several times, so when his Rick brought him here the last time it had seemed almost blasé. He hadn't, to his knowledge, done anything out of the ordinary leading up to his abandonment. They just never came back for him. That was seven months ago. He was worried about his son.

Bald had attempted to turn Rick into the government. He'd come here with a full head of hair and a green polo shirt almost two years ago. He'd tried to leave twice, but the weird creatures outside the facility (and their lack of English) had driven him to give up.

Undershirt's dimension had been taken over by hyper-intelligent rodents, and the family had all fled Earth together. They'd dropped him off here with pride-wounding assurances that it was just to keep him safe while they found a new place to live. That was over a year ago.

Suit also had threatened to tell Beth about one of Rick's experiments gone wrong. He'd gotten a look at his paperwork when his Rick and Morty were checking him in and seen a box labeled _forever _checked, but when he started to protest he'd been shuffled hastily into the main room with all the other Jerries. By the time he got back out, they were gone. He wasn't sure whether Morty had agreed to it or not, but the point was basically moot because no one had returned for him.

Green had only been here four months, but that was more than long enough to give up hope. He'd realized pretty quickly that no one else seemed to stay more than a day or two. Finding this room and the assortment of other abandoned Jerries had been a huge relief to his ego in a way; he'd thought he was the only one.

Pink had been here eighteen months. He didn't know why he'd been dumped. He'd been the first one to find this room and start sleeping here, when golfing lost its thrill and the painful reminders of his family in the main area got to be too much. He'd tried to leave once, and claimed to have almost been eaten by an alien in an alley during the attempt.

They were starting to share details about their dimensions—for example, there were no such things as cows in the one Bald was from, Al Gore had won the 2000 election in Suit's world, and Jerry had a younger sister in Beard's. Little things that they'd only learned were different and interesting because they'd spent the past months or years chatting with each other as they tried to fix a broken television and beat each other at cards. Much as I didn't like admitting to enjoying myself in what was essentially a prison, I found it fascinating.

Late-entry came back with a slice of pizza, a few bottles of water, and several candy bars. “I didn't know quite what you liked, Hero,” he informed me. “But they don't have much in the way of salads here.”

I laughed in his face, and immediately felt bad when he flinched. “I hate salad,” I explained. “Why would you think I wanted salad? This is _perfect_, thank you.” I bit into the pizza with relish, giving him the thumbs-up as I chewed.

He tugged at his collar and looked away. “Because you're a woman?” His voice cracked slightly, betraying his awkwardness.

“Nope,” I said with my mouth full. “I mean, yes, I am. But I live on sugar and coffee. And cheese. This is good pizza. How do aliens make such good food?” I was already nearly up to the crust. I hadn't realized how hungry I was!

“You know, I hadn't thought about it,” he mused, and got a few sounds of agreement from the room at large.

“I think of all sorts of weird stuff,” I explained with my mouth shut. “Like, I don't think they can get it shipped in, can they? They couldn't keep it hot and fresh that long. Or can they? What sort of technology does Rick _have_?”

“Oh, he can do just about anything,” Jacket told me, sounding glum. “It's just a matter of whether or not he wants to.”

“Really,” Beard agreed, “the question is which took less effort—teaching aliens to cook like this, or opening a portal to a cafeteria on Earth.”

I felt a little light bulb go on in my head. “Do you think if you could get into the kitchen area, and there _was _a portal, you could just stroll through it back to Earth?”

Green's eyes got wide at the idea. “It wouldn't be the right dimension. There might already be a Jerry there.”

“Who cares?” Suit declared angrily. “Let him keep his life. I'd settle for any place where I can go back to having _a _life.” His eyes darted toward me. “Maybe I could meet someone new. At the very least, I could sleep in a bed again.”

“Yeah!” Undershirt got to his feet, looking motivated for the first time since I'd come in. “They told us we're free to leave. _They _don't think we can do it. Let's go prove them wrong.”

“Wait at second,” Bald said, thinking aloud. “We're _all _going to go to whatever dimension the cafeteria opens up on? How's that going to work?”

Green shrugged, unconcerned with details now that he had an idea to get excited about. “We'll pretend we're septuplets. Er, octuplets. Whatever.”

“What, and we're all named Jerry?” Bald scoffed. “You don't think there will be any complications from nine guys sharing the same identity?” 

“Let Rick sort it out, then,” Undershirt retorted. “He created the problem, he can fix it. You've just been here so long you're scared to leave.”

“Give me a break,” Bald shot back. “You know exactly how he'd fix it. He'd shoot all of us and leave us in an unmarked grave.”

“And sleep just fine at night,” I added, unable to stay silent. “He's right. You'd have to stay off Rick's radar. _If _there's even a portal at all.” They all turned to stare at me. “I'm not saying it's a bad idea,” I said, since they seemed to expect more now. “But you've got to plan it out. At least check out the kitchen before you start getting all gung-ho. If it's actually a possibility, one or two of you should go through to see what the dimension's like and what your options are.”

“What about you?” Pink asked. “Are you coming? If it's possible, I mean?”

I shook my head slowly. “I can't _go _to the kitchen, remember? I can't go anywhere out there. And even if I could...I don't know.”

“Maybe we can figure out a way to disable your chip,” Green said eagerly.

I raised my eyebrows. “No offense, but you haven't even gotten that TV working. I don't think I want you playing around in my spine.”

All eight of them looked properly mortified at that. I decided it was better not to admit that even if I _could _leave, I wasn't sure I'd want to. Moving to some other dimension, pretending I didn't exist, and living with a bunch of Jerries who weren't mine and who would probably start fighting over me? Maybe if I gave up on getting home. But I couldn't give up on that. Not yet.

Beard cleared his throat and stood up. “I'll go see what I can find, then.”

After a moment's hesitation, Green got to his feet, too. “I'll go with you,” he offered.

Suit narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “If there _is _a portal, are you actually going to come back and tell us?”

“You don't _trust_ me?” Beard asked, looking hurt. “Come on, we're all Jerries here.” He smiled around the room guilelessly.

Bald shrugged and pulled a deck of card out of his pocket. “Go ahead, suit yourself. Who wants to play Euchre?”

“_Euchre_?” I was delighted. “I haven't played in years. Someone will have to reteach me.”

“I will,” Pink offered at once.

Late-entry shot him a disparaging look. Pink lifted his eyebrows defiantly, daring him to say something. “Thanks,” I said in the name of keeping the peace, and moved over to sit next to him. “Hopefully it'll all come back quickly. I used to love it.”

*

The day passed. We played Euchre for a few hours, and I was briefly able to forget the direness of my situation. I realized, when I excused myself to use the bathroom down the hall, that that was happening far more often than it should. Half the time I was devastated and furious and heartbroken, yes...but at the times I was able to set that aside, I was actually enjoying myself. I liked Jerry. I liked _all _the Jerries, and surrounding me with them was a very good way of keeping me compliant and placated. In some ways, leaving me here had been a brilliant idea on Rick's part.

Green and Beard came back with the irritating news that they hadn't been able to _find _the kitchen. This made absolutely no sense, so Suit and Jacket decided to go take a look for themselves. The rest of us switched over to playing poker, which I was much worse at. But, as with golf, my lack of skill seemed to delight the Jerries playing, which in turn amused me. After a while Suit and Jacket returned, very frustrated, with the same lack of results. There _was _a door behind the cafeteria, apparently, but even though it had no visible lock it refused to open. Which meant there probably _was _something useful back there, but for now they were stumped.

Naturally, all the other Jerries then had to go see for themselves, because they wouldn't be satisfied until they'd seen the door in question and been allowed to putter around with it. It was really cute. Only Late-entry stayed behind to keep me company.

“You okay there, Hero?” he asked softly, putting his feet up on the table on which we'd recently been playing cards.

I looked at him sideways, chewing my lip as I organized my thoughts.

“What?” he asked, looking suddenly insecure.

I shrugged, unable to put words to it. “You're different, that's all. Just slightly different from the other Jerries.”

“Does that mean you don't love me?” he asked, making a very convincing, very sad face.

I couldn't help cracking a grin. “See, that's exactly what I mean! Jerry wouldn't joke about that.”

“Well, I do.” He folded his arms over his chest. “And I'm Jerry.”

“Prove it,” I said, crossing my arms, too. “Who was Jack's best friend in Titanic?”

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Fabrizio. Give me something hard.”

“What was the name of that movie where the guy plays Peter Gabriel on a boombox and holds it above his head?”

“...am I supposed to know that one? I mean, ha, I've seen the movie...”

“No, you're not. What was The Duke's real name in Midnight Run?”

“Mardukas! Why are these all about movies?”

“Because I don't know how much of your life resembled my Jerry's. Okay, what are your parents' names?”

“Leonard and Joyce.”

“What was your job before you came here?”

“I'm in advertising.”

“Oh? How was your 'hungry for apples' pitch received?”

“Not bad,” he said, and I blinked and stopped.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, not seeming awkward or shifty at all. “I mean, not like I got promoted for it, but the client seemed happy enough. I mean—” He laughed a little. “I mean, I didn't get _fired _over it or anything. It wasn't _that _bad! What did _you _think of it?”

I smiled, hoping the sorrow I was feeling for my own Jerry didn't show in my face. “Honestly? I loved it. So hey, I missed your story earlier when everyone was sharing. How long have you been here? It can't have been that long. The apples thing was only last spring, right?”

He nodded. “About six months ago, I, uh, well...Beth told me she wanted a divorce.”

“Wait.” My breath caught in my throat. “Did you make her choose between you and Rick? Thinking you were just putting your foot down on the insanity?”

Slowly, wariness in his face, he nodded. “Your Jerry did the same thing?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed the spit in my mouth. “From what I can tell, none of the other guys here made that stand.” I snorted in sympathy. “Guess that was the wrong hill to die on, eh?”

“You're telling me,” he agreed bitterly. “That's how I wound up here.”

“It is?” I couldn't contain my surprise. “How so?”

He shrugged, looking now like he might cry. “She said she wanted a divorce. I...” His voice constricted, becoming thin and tight. “I said no. That, ah. Um, that I wasn't giving up. We agreed to sleep on it.” I saw his adam's apple bob up and down. “I woke up here.” He swallowed again, no longer looking at me. It didn't prevent me from noting the tears in his eyes, though. “I don't know if Rick did it on his own, or if she asked him to. I guess I n...never will.” He coughed, and it turned into a quiet sob.

_This seems very familiar_, I thought as I pulled him into a hug. His smell was slightly different from my Jerry's—probably because he lived in a dusty back room with seven other guys and no adequate shower facilities—but it was still manly and familiar. The way I fit against his chest was the same, and so was the soft sound of pleasure and relief he made. I'd hugged all of them earlier, but this one seemed to carry a special weight to it. I didn't break away, and his hands tightened around my back in a way that made my heart pick up the pace. He made a sound that was almost a groan, and moved his head in a way that made me suspect he was smelling my hair. I turned my face up to him, and he looked down with the kind of longing that could shatter any woman's willpower.

But he didn't make a move. And neither did I.

And I knew, somehow, that if there was a Celia alive and single in his dimension, even if they'd both gone to the block party and started talking, this Jerry wouldn't have kissed her. That hurt, somehow. Like a wound opening up deep beneath the surface.

I bent my head back down, and held him tighter.

We stayed like that for quite a while. I stood there listening to him breathe, imagining I was back home and everything was normal. I let my guard down, and started crying into his shirt. His hands made uncertain yet soothing circles on my back until I stopped sniffling. Then I stood there for a while longer, listening to him breathe, _not _imagining I was anywhere else or with anyone else, and that was good, too.

We eventually stepped apart and let the inevitable awkwardness take hold. We looked at each other; we looked away. Jerry cleared his throat; I shoved my hands in my back pockets. I flashed an embarrassed grin and then stared at the ceiling; he tugged at the collar of his shirt. I made myself meet his eyes. “I needed that,” I told him with a tight smile. “Thanks.”

He cleared his throat again. “No thanks needed. I did, too.”

“I'm....not a hero, you know,” I said, struggling to articulate my feelings. “I'm just fumbling around like you guys. Put me in a room full of Celias and I'd probably accept crap treatment, too. It's just that seeing _you guys_ get kicked around pisses me off.” I sighed. “I wish I could actually do something about it. But now I can't even go out there to get food for myself, so I'm more a burden than anything.”

Jerry stared at me in disbelief. “Is that really what you think?”

“You brought me pizza,” I pointed out, and the stilted atmosphere started to thaw. “That makes you _my _hero.”

He smiled at me in a way that could have thawed an iceberg. “No one's ever called me a hero before.”

“Then they underestimate you.” I beamed back at him.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, starting to nod. “Maybe they _do_.”

“I mean,” I said, trying to pump him up now, “you're a successful ad guy, you managed to raise a family while you were still young and broke, you're a sweetheart who thinks to bring a girl pizza, and you refused to give up on your marriage even when your wife's priorities were way out of whack.” I shrugged with my hands out. “You're a keeper.”

He laughed nervously. “Sounds to me like you, ah, you just really like pizza.”

“Nah.” I waved a hand dismissively. “I mean, yes, okay, I do. But you're the one who thought to get it. And I _still _haven't done anything done anything in return.”

“You may have found a way for us to get out of here,” he pointed out. “And you haven't even been here a day.”

I sank back into my chair. “I was just thinking aloud when I said that. I mean, if it works, I'm thrilled for you. You deserve something better than here. But....I dunno. I worry.”

“You don't think we can take care of ourselves?” There was only a slightly defensive edge to his voice. My Jerry would probably have been indignant. The thought made me smile.

“Nnnnnot totally, no,” I admitted with a laugh that would soften the blow. “In some circumstances, some of you, yes. But all together? Potentially against Rick? In a strange dimension?”

“And you can't come,” he reminded us both.

I made myself grin. “Well gee, you just met me, it's not like you need to take my future into account.” He looked at me in a way I didn't like, and I let my eyes slide sideways to the cards left on the table.

“Who's going to bring you pizza if we leave?”

“I'll find a way out on my own,” I said with conviction. “I _have _to.”

“Can I...” He coughed. “Can I ask a weird question?”

“Fire away.”

And yet he hesitated before asking, “What's so special about him?”

Tension crept back into my shoulders. “My Jerry?”

He nodded. “You said you love all of us, so...?” He spread his hands and raised his eyebrows.

“Honestly?” I pictured Jerry, the way he'd looked when he passed out on my sofa that first night. The little sounds he made when I kissed him hard. The timbre of his voice when he told me good night. And then I looked over at _this_ Jerry and tried to give him the real answer he deserved. “Nothing. And everything. He's Jerry. He's like you. He's like all of you. But that doesn't make him any less special. That doesn't make any of our moments from the past six months any less important. And there have been a lot of them. And...” I was floundering in ideas, struggling here. “And he's still _there_. Probably looking for me. Probably miserable. I have to get back.”

“Ah. Because he needs you.”

“Because he _loves_ me,” I corrected him. 

“Oh,” was all he said to that.

I reached across the table and took his hand. “We'll get you out of here, too, okay? I'm not just going to take off if I can help it. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do yet, since I'm stuck here eating pizza and all, but...”

“You have a lot of faith in yourself, don't you?”

I made a face. “Not really. I'm just stubborn.”

He laughed. “There's a difference?”

I darted my eyes from side-to-side. “Mmmmaybe?”

He laughed again, and I felt amazing.

*

I don't really know when day became night, because all of it was artificial here. The other Jerries returned, which was both a relief and a disappointment. One-on-one felt risky, much as I trusted Jerry—Late-entry-Jerry, that was—and much as I'd enjoyed it. They all came back very excited and full of themselves from playing spy, and this time there had been a modicum of progress. They'd seen the cafeteria alien press something against the door, go inside, and return with stacks of hot food. Seemed like it _was _cheaper to import Earth food via some sort of portal. They hadn't found out what was on the other side, or how to get in, but they felt like they were _doing _something. The sense of self-importance suddenly manifesting in most of them was really cute.

They were so pumped up they decided to have one more shot at connecting the television cables. I was getting sleepy by then, so I claimed my spot of wall and drowsed, watching them fondly and wishing I had some sort of blanket to pull over myself. I wasn't really cold, but having a blanket or someone to snuggle with would have made my body realize it needed to relax.

I endeavored to fall asleep anyway, and after a while I did drift off. It was the first sleep I'd had in quite a while that wasn't forced on me by a dart or chloroform or whatever, and I was stressed to the point of exhaustion, so I should have enjoyed the experience. But I wasn't used to sleeping on a hard floor with no blankets, and while the wall at my back was nice it wasn't the same as a pillow or nice cozy boyfriend.

Funny, he'd slept in my bed all of three nights before I got taken away. And I missed it already. I woke with a headache again, and another crick in my neck. I was chilly and sore. Beard was still sitting in the corner, smoking a cigarette and flipping through a book, and Bald and Green were playing some sort of game at the table, but everyone else had turned into pathetic shadowy shapes curled up around the perimeter of the room.

Sleepiness had fogged my brain, dimming all the logical objections I'd constructed earlier. Right now all I could think was that I hurt, I was tired, I missed my boyfriend, and there was the next best thing six feet away. Before I could second-guess myself, I crawled over the the nearest sleeping Jerry, lay down next to him, and wiggled backward until my back was pressed against his chest. His breathing stayed deep and rhythmic, so I went ahead and pulled his arm over me. Almost immediately, sleep started to close back in around me. And no harm done to anyone. Beautiful. I yawned and escaped into dreams.

When I next tested the waters of wakefulness, I was comfortable and warm. I knew I wasn't in bed, but it wouldn't have been the first time Jerry and I fell asleep on the floor or the sofa while watching a movie. I snuggled closer, submerging myself back in the depths of sleep, and relished how the arm looped over my waist tightened possessively.

I felt something hard pressing into the small of my back, and a cloud of desire billowed up inside me, unfurling and spreading rapidly. I rolled over in his arms, pressing my front against his, tipping my face up to rub my cheek on the scruff of his chin without opening my eyes. He made a small sound of assent, and his lips met mine.

We kissed for a long while. I still didn't notice anything amiss—though maybe I just didn't want to. I wrapped one of my legs around him, rocking my hips persuasively, and wrapped my arms behind his neck. I decided this was the best way to wake up, no question.

I realized we should at least move to the privacy of the bedroom, in case the kids woke up. I opened my eyes.

And yelped “Oh _fuck_!” and released Jerry as if he was burning hot.

He sat up, wearing a pink golf shirt, rubbing sleep off his face, and looking extremely wounded.

“Oh, fuck,” I said again, at a loss for anything more profound. My exclamation must have woken up several of the other Jerries, because about four of them were now staring at us. Unless they'd been watching us the whole time. Anything was possible. I gritted my teeth, wishing I could kick myself. “I am so sorry,” I told Pink, scooting further away from him across the floor. “I...gah. Fuck. No offense. I'm sorry. I was sleepy, I forgot where I was.”

“Hey, I didn't go to _you_.” His voice was hardened in anger and hurt. “I woke up and you were all over me.”

“I'm sorry,” I repeated frantically. “I...I was thinking you were my Jerry.”

“Yeah well you know what?” he told me tartly, turning his back on me and facing the wall. “_Your _Jerry isn't here. I'd be happy to step up as replacement, but you know, when you don't even ask and then you try to take it back, it's just, well...it's tacky and it's lame.”

“I know,” I said unhappily, mentally kicking myself even harder. “I'm sorry. You don't deserve that. But I didn't mean to.”

“Your boyfriend's so special, until you get cold in the middle of the night, and then any Jerry will do,” he said snarkily.

I stared at my feet, not having any retort to that. “You're right,” I said softly. “I'm sorry, Jerry.”

“Quit trying to guilt her into things,” Late-entry-Jerry snapped, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You got more than you expected to, you enjoyed it, and she apologized. Let it go.”

I looked up at him gratefully, then focused on Pink again. He still had his back turned to me. What the hell could I do to make this right? I understood that he wasn't really angry so much as hurt, and any apology I tried to make was only going to put salt in the wound. But what else was I supposed to do? Tell him to fuck off? Tell him I liked it? Tell him I wanted to do it again?

I don't know how much of those thoughts showed in my face, but Late-entry must have seen _something _of them, because when I looked his way I saw his eyes widen. Then his mouth twitched into a frown of disgust. He shook his head and looked away, and I knew I'd fucked up. I didn't need the anger and hurt Pink was radiating to tell me I'd fucked up, or the mixture of high interest and displeasure I saw in the faces of the others. The one little frown of disgust said it all.

Guilt wrapped around my chest, digging a hole and twisting as it burrowed in deep. The tears hit the back of my throat first, thickening my voice before they spilled over onto my cheeks.“I'm sorry,” I managed, pushing myself away from Pink—away from all from all of them—with my heels. “I just wanted to help. I...I have to get out of here.”

“But the chip—” one of them protested as I scrambled to my feet.

I ran blindly out of the room, down the hall. Who cared if I peed my pants, who cared if it hurt. I'd keep moving anyway. I'd push through it and get to a ship and get _home_. I had to. I had to.

I went for the garage I'd seen the previous morning, bursting through the door and focusing on the nearest vehicle instead of the telltale tingling in my neck. It got stronger, stretching tendrils of pain down my spine and into my shoulders. I set my teeth and looked for a door handle on the spaceship. My nerves all started protesting, and heat flashed through me in a way that was both like an orgasm and totally unlike one. My leg muscles gave up, but I stubbornly kept clawing at the side of the ship. If only they used the same sort of fucking _handles _as I was used to...

My hands cramped up, and I felt warmth spread down the legs of my pants as my bladder released. Small electrical shock my _ass_, Rick! I was going to black out if I didn't get out of here, and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do that when none of my muscles were cooperating. I tried to force myself back to my feet, making grunts and whimpers of pain in the process. I fell back over with a strangled cry, and started swearing like a sailor.

A pair of strong arms went under my armpits, and when my head lolled backward I saw Jerry's face, framed by an open button-up shirt. He tugged me backward, face set with determination, until we were back over the doorway. The cramps in my muscles started to relax, but the pain took a few minutes to wear off this time. I curled up as I wept, not accepting any comfort. I didn't deserve it.

I calmed down as it wore off, leaving me with a wet face, wet jeans, and sore muscles. “Thanks, hero,” I said shakily when I trusted myself to speak. “Sorry about all that.”

He folded his arms over his chest and stared me down.

I squirmed. “Go on, say it. I deserve it, and you'll feel better.”

He shook his head. “Look I...I get it.”

“You do?” I felt my eyebrows shoot upward.

“Well...okay, no, not really. I have no clue. But I can see you're upset.”

I bit the inside of my lip. “I'm scared I'll never get home. I was sleepy and lonely and...I think I just wanted to forget, for a little while, where I was. I figured, why not. And then I fell asleep and really _did_ forget, and, well...” I screwed my face up into something apologetic and embarrassed.

“Why not?” he repeated, still looking grossed out. “Because that Jerry's kind of an asshole, that's why not. Out of all of us, if you were going to do that...” He made a face and shook his head.

I made a face, too, and nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He nodded silently, but looked vaguely smug. “So. Uh. You tested out that chip?”

My cheeks flushed. “That's a nice way of saying 'hey, I see you peed yourself.'”

“Did you?” He coughed unconvincingly. “I didn't even notice.”

“Bullshit,” I said, and he cracked a smile. “So now what? Can I ever show my face in there again?”

“Oh, sure.” He flapped a hand. “You might get some, uh, hopeful looks. Be careful around Jerry. But yeah, you'll be fine.”

“'Be careful around Jerry,'” I repeated dryly. “Do you really all just call each other Jerry?”

“What else would we call each other?” he asked, confused.

“I have no idea,” I replied with a straight face.

*

On the one hand, as the days wore on, I _did _feel like I was making a small difference to the Jerries' lives without offering up my body to all of them. I'd given them the idea for their escape, and every time there was some new development on that front, they asked for my opinion in deciding what to do with the new information. I thought differently than them, and a fresh perspective was a valuable thing here. I was also able to give nice chaste hugs, make them laugh on occasion, and make them feel important because I needed to be fed and protected. Undershirt made it his business to carry my message to all the visiting Jerries—to tell stories about the lady who came in shouting about how they all deserved better. This job also seemed to entail bringing me any interesting comments he heard while he was out there mingling.

Meanwhile, Suit was leading the attempts to get to the portal in the kitchen. Green and Bald were teaching me how to play a better game of poker. And Late-entry Jerry was falling in love with me.

I don't know what made him different from the other seven, at least in that regard. Spending day after day with a bunch of guys I felt like I already knew...I really did love all of them, in a strange way. They all reminded me so powerfully of my Jerry, and I wanted to see them happy. And they all seemed at least marginally attracted to me, in addition to enjoying the advice, company, and faith of someone new. If I'd decided to give up on getting home and move forward with someone in the _right _way, any of them probably would have been happy to give it a shot.

So what made things different with Late-entry, who I now thought of in my head as just “Jerry?” What made our chemistry clink and ring like a wine glass at a wedding? Why did he look at me the way he did? How had he become my safe space in this crazy parody of a universe?

It didn't make a difference, really. Not in any practical way, anyhow. What did matter was that he was a great companion who routinely brought me food, entertained me, and kept my worst inclinations in check. Out of all of them, I worried about him the most, because out of all of them, he was the most deserving of something good.

The few tidbits of information that I got from my Jerries weren't enough for me to plan a new escape attempt of my own, and I hadn't heard or seen anything further from Rick. After about a week, I was more invested in finding a solution for them than I was optimistic about my own future. At least with them, there was something proactive to be done. And I'd rather be focused on a goal for someone else than drifting aimlessly in depression.

Hell, maybe if they found a new dimension to go through, I _could _find a way to tag along. They could all carry me. Maybe in that world, my husband was still alive. Maybe versions of my kids were there. It wasn't my first choice—the idea of my husband being alive and remarried was enough to keep me up at night—but it was still worth entertaining the idea. Anything was possible, right?

Sometimes I stayed up late into the night writing letters to my children, or thinking of names that sounded similar to “Jerry” for my guys to use if they were trying to pass themselves off as octuplets or something, or just asking Late-entry what he'd do if he found out his Beth definitely hadn't been the one to send him on permanent vacation. (He said he wasn't sure.)

And then, just as the whole thing had started without warning, it came to an end out of nowhere. I was sitting around the room, letting my hair dry after washing it in the bathroom sink, playing Euchre with Late-entry, Jacket, and Beard. Jacket had just called clubs and I trying to make the best of a bad situation, making some serious eye contact with Late-entry in my attempts to communicate that I had _nothing_.

A couple of teenagers strolled around the corner and through the doorway, armed with what I thought were space weapons. I recognized them—the teens, not the guns—from pictures I had seen in what felt like another lifetime. I stared, mouth gaping like an idiot. All five of the Jerries present jumped to their feet, scattering cards and dropping books and screwdrivers.

“Morty!” Green exclaimed, with enough excitement and relief to tear my heart out.

“Summer!” cried Beard at almost the same time, moving toward the kids like a man in a dream.

The girl held her hands up in front of her. “Sorry, guys, not your Summer.” She glanced at her brother. “You were right, this _is _really weird.”

Morty nodded, looking from one Jerry to the next. “Look, uh...” His voice squeaked, but his expression was firm and fearless. “I'm sorry, but we're not here for you. My dad's still back home.”

Bald turned away immediately, so I didn't have to see his crestfallen face. Green crumpled, putting his face in his hands. Jacket's lip trembled. My heart wrenched for every last one of them. But I also knew, if these Smith children didn't belong to any of the Jerries at the facility, that there was only one reason they'd come here.

Late-entry knew it, too. He stayed on his feet, looking from me to them and back again. “Oh,” he said, his voice cracking. “You're here for her, then.”

Morty looked dismayed at the shows of emotion. Summer was looking around the room, processing for the first time what she was really seeing. “How long have you guys _been_ here?” she asked, sounding repulsed.

“They've been here way too long,” I told her, taking a deep breath as I stepped forward. “Maybe you can talk to your grandpa about getting them some better accommodations.”

“I...._yeah_,” she said, before shaking her head and focusing back on me. “So you're my dad's girlfriend?”

I swallowed hard, took another deep breath, and nodded. “I'm sorry we haven't met before,” I said, offering her my hand. “I'm Celia.”

“Yeah, yeah, listen,” said Morty urgently, stepping forward and grabbing my hand, “we need to get you back home. Dad's, uh, Dad's pretty worried.”

Summer rolled her eyes. “You mean the _police_ are pretty worried. Dad's totally losing it.”

“Yeah,” Morty agreed, nodding. “We need to get you back.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Thanks, but it's not like this was a voluntary vacation. If I could just go home, I would have done it days ago.”

“There's a chip in her neck,” Late-entry said, strangely calm as he stepped forward and slipped his hand in mine. “She gets shocked if she tries to leave.”

“What the...Jesus Christ, Grandpa,” Morty muttered, and sighed. “Okay, Summer, lemme borrow that scanner.”

“I know how to use these things, too,” she objected, flicking a switch on her gun defiantly and pointing its purple light at me. “Yeah, see, it's...um. Hm.”

Morty looked over her shoulder. This whole thing felt too surreal. I glanced over at Late-entry, who squeezed my hand for support. I squeezed back, and considered reevaluating my definition of “surreal.”

“See? It's right there.” He pointed at something on the gun I couldn't see, and walked toward me. “I'm just gonna hit you with a magnet for a minute, okay?” he told me gently, holding up his hands as though he were approaching a wild animal. “It'll, um, neutralize the chip in there if I do it right.”

“And if you don't do it right?” I squeaked.

There was a definite pause that I didn't like. “...I'll get it right,” he said, very unconvincingly.

Before I had a chance to object, he whacked me in the back of the neck with the butt of the space gun. I dropped.

“What the _fuck_!” demanded Late-entry, kneeling down and helping me back to my feet.

I rubbed my neck dazedly as Summer hit me with the purple light again. “Yep, looks like that did it.”

“Wait,” I said, hand still on my neck. “That _did _it? You mean I...you're taking me home? It's that easy?”

“I sure hope so,” Morty said, flashing me a brief, sweet smile.

“But, your mom....” I turned my head sideways, studying them warily. “Your grandpa... They aren't just going to try to get rid of me again?”

“Grandpa already got an earful from the Rick who runs this place,” Morty told me as he shook his head.

“Is that why you're here to collect me?” I held my breath.

“No, we're here to collect you because the police think Dad killed you,” Summer said, managing to sound both irritated and bored. “And Mom washed her hands of the whole thing last week.”

I clapped my hand to my mouth. “He's not in _jail_, is he?” I gasped in horror. “They wouldn't have any _evidence_!”

“N-not exactly,” Morty stammered, “but he's not allowed to leave town right now, either. Are you coming, or-or what?”

I felt frozen. My feet were rooted to the spot, and the weight of Late-entry's fingers against mine was almost unbearable. Slowly, my neck turned, and I looked around the room. I wanted to go home to my Jerry and my kids. I _needed_ to go home to them. But I didn't want to leave these guys. They might still pull off their own escape. Or maybe I could go back and keep pestering Summer and Morty to pressure Rick into helping, somehow. My staying here wasn't really going to help them.

But still, I didn't want to leave. I gave a watery smile to all the other Jerries. Devastated as they were by the arrival of a version of their kids, they didn't seem to have much grief left over for me. But one of them was still holding my hand, and I wished I could bring him with me. I couldn't. I knew that.

And it hurt. It _really _hurt.

I turned fully toward him, trusting that the kids would wait for me. “I...” My eyes were already filling up with tears. “I guess I have to go.”

He nodded, but I saw a telltale tremble in his jaw, and heard his faint sniff. “Of course you do. Go back to your Jerry.”

I squeezed his hand tighter, then gave up and flung my arms around him instead. “I don't want to leave you.”

“Yeah, well...” He choked on the words, and stopped talking.

“I'll get you out of here,” I promised him rashly. “I'll do everything I can to get you back to your dimension. Or some dimension with a Celia who needs you.”

He must not have trusted himself to speak, because he just nodded.

“Thank you for everything,” I told him, not caring that I was crying. “You're still my hero.”

“I shouldn't be,” he said, so hoarse and soft I almost didn't catch it.

“But you are,” I said. “And I hate that I have to choose.”

“Um,” Morty spoke up tentatively. “We really need to go...”

I nodded, and released him. “I promise,” I told him again. “I'm not going to forget about you.”

He gave me a depressingly weak smile. Coward that I was, I turned away before I had to see him break down. I gave a crisp nod to Morty, wiped at my eyes, and walked out of the room with them.

We made it more than halfway down the hall before I ground to a halt, realizing I couldn't do it. Not like this. “_One _more minute,” I told the kids, holding up a finger. “I'll be right back.”

Before they could protest, I ran back down the hall and threw myself at him one last time. “I love you,” I told him simply, and pulled him down into a kiss. 

It was one of those stupid romantic movie moments, the kind that could never happen in real life, that one beautiful moment for a love that can never be. It was deep, and sad, and meaningful, and perfect.

And then it was over, and I smiled up at him through my tears. “I wanted to do that at least once,” I told him, and ran back out of the room before I had the chance to change my mind. It felt immature, but I didn't seem to have time for anything else, and what good would prolonging the goodbye do?

It felt almost as if I was in a trance as I followed Summer and Morty out of the building. I wanted to go home more than anything, but right now my reality was back there in that room. How could I be in love with two versions of the same man? Was that an emotional affair, or a testament to how head-over-heels I was for Jerry Smith?

“So what's the big hurry?” I asked, finally coming out of my trance as they hustled me toward the lobby. “Gotta get home before Grandpa finds out you stole his ship?”

“Uh...” answered Morty. “Not exactly.”

“No,” Summer said more concisely, “but we do need to get back before he gets pissed that we stole his portal gun.” She pulled another high-tech device off her belt, fired it at the wall, and jumped through.

I turned to Morty. “Why couldn't you have just done that in the same room you found me?”

He seemed very interested in his shoes. “Because, um, then the other versions of my dad would have come through.”

Exactly why I wished he _had _done that, damn it! “And would that have been so awful?” I demanded.

He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, um, y....yeah, kinda.”

I folded my arms over my chest defiantly, trying to ignore the spinning green portal next to us. It wasn't going to close without us. And if it did, Summer would just come back through. They wanted me bad enough to come here, and there was no way she was leaving her brother behind. So I stared him down. “Do you have any idea what those Jerries have gone through? They've been there _months_. Some of them have been there _years_. They don't have bedrooms. They don't have bathtubs. They don't have female company. They were just left there because some version of you or your mom or your grandpa just couldn't be bothered anymore. I know they're not your dad, but that's your _dad_. Don't they deserve at least a little better than _that_?”

His toes must have been _very _interesting. “Yeah, um....I guess so...”

I took a deep breath. The portal was still there, waiting for us. “Morty,” I said, making myself calmer. Compassionate, even. He looked up at me, and I gave him a gentle smile. This was not the first impression I'd wanted to make on Jerry's kids. “I love your dad. You know that, right?”

He nodded solemnly. “Sure. I mean, um. That's why we came back for you, you know? I thought I wanted my parents to get back together, but the way Dad's been this week, it's...it's not right, you know?”

I held his eyes steadily. “You know your mom was trying to get back together with him, right? That's why she wanted me gone.”

He gave a fluttering, nervous laugh. “I know. But that didn't work out so well. They had a really big fight or....or something, after you disappeared. She says she doesn't want anything to do with him. Again. And I thought maybe, wait a minute, maybe they really _shouldn't_ be together.”

I didn't have to work to put the compassion in my smile this time, and I put a reassuring hand on his arm. “That's really mature of you. Thank you. Not just for rescuing me. For doing it for your dad. That means a lot.”

“Um, yeah, okay,” he said nervously. “Can we....can we go home now?”

I bit my lower lip. “Will you try and do something to help out those other Jerries you saw?”

“Wow,” he said, clearly not expecting me to try bargaining. Of course it was all a bluff on my part; wild horses couldn't have kept me from my kids and my boyfriend now that I was this close. “Uh, um...I don't really know what I can do...” He rubbed the back of his neck again, then looked back at me with bright, earnest eyes. “But yeah, I'll try. Okay?”

I smiled and nodded, unable to find any words to express my gratitude for that small promise. “So. Do I, uh, I just walk through it, then?”

“Yep!” Profoundly relieved, he offered me his arm. I took it, allowing him to lead me through. It felt like a warm pulse of static electricity, nothing more.

I blinked. We were just inside my front door, the last place I remembered being. I barely had time to let go of Morty's arm and marvel that it was like I'd never left before footsteps came thumping up the stairs from the basement. Jerry burst into the hallway—_my _Jerry, my _Jerry—_and I barely noticed Summer appearing behind him because he was grabbing me, pulling me so close to him I couldn't breathe, holding my face in his hands to be check that I was real and alright, blabbering tearfully and incoherently about how frantic he'd been.

I put my arms around him and clutched him so tightly my hands hurt. “It's okay,” I murmured, not letting go. “It's okay. I'm here. It's okay.”

“They wouldn't tell me where you were,” he tried to explain, and I could just imagine the self-pity he'd been drowning himself in. “And your parents came around, and they didn't believe you'd just leave, and that's really not the way I wanted to meet them because I was a mess and they thought there must be something I wasn't saying because, well, you know, there _was_, because how do you explain to a cop that your father in law probably just used some crazy _space _technology to execute your girlfriend, and the boys were worried and your friends were worried and _I _was worried but they wouldn't _tell _me...”

“Dad,” Summer interjected sharply. “Get a grip. She's fine. We got her back for you.”

He held me at arm's length with one arm, drying his eyes with the other. He was wearing his favorite green shirt, had circles under his eyes, and was overdue for a shave. I couldn't have looked any better—and in fact, probably looked a lot worse. “You're alright?”

“You thought they _executed_ me?” I demanded in return.

“Come on, Dad,” Morty objected, “I told you Rick wouldn't do _that_.”

“Yeah, because he's so highly moral,” I snorted, and pulled Jerry close to me again. _God_, it felt good. It felt like I'd come home, in more ways than one. “But no, he didn't kill me. I had a hell of a weird week, but I'm fine. Where are the boys?”

“Your parents took them,” he said, starting to calm down marginally. “Maybe you could, ah, call them up and tell them I didn't kill you?”

“Yeah, that'd probably be a good idea.” I didn't want to let him go yet, though. I'd spent the last eight days surrounded by him, even started to fall in love for another _version _of him, and yet I was still this elated to see him. I nuzzled my face against his chest, relishing the reassuring smells and textures. “I missed you so much.”

“Me too,” he said, and leaned down eagerly to kiss me. Being able to give myself over to that kiss—to not feel guilty, to not hold back, to taste the promise of more—that was what really let me know it was going to be alright. I kissed him back as hard as I could, as if I could use my mouth to prove to both of us how much I loved him. It was intoxicating. It was erotic. It was a relief. It was...

“Gross,” Summer said, and I realized belatedly that Morty had been making awkward, half-assed objections for the past twenty seconds or so. “Get a room.”

We broke apart, and even as I felt my face flush, I was grinning. “Sorry,” I said to them with my eyes still on their father. “I really should be thanking you for bringing me back instead of making out with your dad, shouldn't I.”

“It'd be nice,” Summer agreed, though I thought I detected some amusement in her voice.

Jerry cleared his throat and actually turned his head to look at them. “Yes, thank you. Nice work, kids. Now if you'll excuse us...”

“Oh, it was no big deal,” Summer said airily. “We just had to get Grandpa Rick drunk enough to tell us what he'd done with her—”

“Yeah, I bet that was real hard,” Jerry muttered under his breath.

“--then wait for him to pass out and steal his portal gun, figure out how to compute it to the right location, search all through some crazy warehouse full of yous from other dimensions, get shouted at by her for something we can't control, disable some dumb electric chip, and get her back here.” She rolled her eyes. “And we totally did it just so you two could make out in front of us.”

“Oh my God is _that _where you were?” Jerry nearly yelped, ignoring his daughter's heavy use of sarcasm.

“Oh, so you've been.” I couldn't quite decide if I found that amusing or horrifying. “Quite the mind-fuck, eh?”

“Y...yeah.” He was looking at me a little strangely now, and I could only imagine some of the questions and possibilities going through his head.

I kissed him again. “Don't worry. I'll fill you in on everything, but there's nothing to stress about.”

“Ah.” He smiled, embarrassed. “Am I really that transparent?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I laughed. “But I love that about you. And hey, I got to meet your kids finally. That's pretty cool.”

That got a tentative smile from Morty, and Jerry returned his focus to his children. It must have been starting to sink in that I was really back. “That _is _pretty cool,” he agreed. “Figures they'd wait until I _stopped_ suggesting it, though.”

Morty had the grace to look embarrassed at this thinly veiled complaint, but Summer lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We _told _you why we didn't want to. It just...turns out we were wrong.”

“_They _didn't think it was going to last,” Jerry explained rather pointedly.

“Well knowing Dad, we figured he was just trying to get back at Mom,” Summer shot back, sounding almost bored. “And that this was going to end really badly.”

Jerry cleared his throat sharply, displaying irritation. “It almost _did_.” It was funny watching him bicker with his own children like this; he was great with mine, but then again I knew full well that no one was quite as good at aggravating you as your own family.

I put a quelling hand on his arm, reminding him that I was alright. Nothing a hot shower and long night in a comfortable bed wouldn't fix. “Go easy on them,” I said with a small smile. “They _did _come to my rescue. And since they'd never met me before, I don't think it's going out on a limb to say they did it for _you_.”

“I...” Slightly shame-faced, he nodded thanks to them. “When she's right, she's right. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Morty smiled shyly. “Anyway, I'm, um...I'm glad you're not like we thought. I'm glad I helped.”

“Me too,” Summer nodded thoughtfully. “We could maybe hang out sometime, if you think you can keep Dad from trying to suck your face off the whole time.”

I laughed uncertainly. Teenage girls secretly terrified me. “I'm probably pretty boring, but I'd love to give it a shot. As long as I'm not risking pissing off your mom again.”

She flashed me a brief but genuine smile, and turned toward the front door. “Nah, you're good. C'mon, Morty, let's get out of here before they go back at it.”

“Oh! Um. Ew? Um. Okay. Bye, Dad. Nice meeting you, Celia.” Summer opened the door, and he trailed after her. I looked over at Jerry, and saw that he was smiling fondly after them.

I slipped my hand into his. “They're nice kids,” I told him quietly. “Morty's a lot like you, isn't he.”

“You think so?” He watched them all the way down the walk, then shut the door and turned back to me. “I can't believe you're here.”

I nodded, slipping back into his arms. “I can't either, really. It's been insane. How do we know something like that isn't going to happen again?” I hated to ask, because my paranoia wasn't _quite _strong enough to ruin the moment, but I also doubted I'd ever fully relax again. 

“_Something like that_ probably will,” he sighed. “At least as long as you're dating me.”

I glanced up at him. “You're not exactly doing much to dispel the fear here, you know?”

His shoulders rose and fell slightly. “I'm surprised we made it this far without anything weird happening. But as long as the kids are in my life, Rick's going to be out there in the shadows, and that means crazy shit is always a possibility.”

“Jerry...” There was both warning and real fear in my voice. He heard it, and hugged me.

“You think they've still got it in for you? Nah, Shorty, you can chill out.”

That made me relax enough to laugh, which in turn made me relax a bit more. “But how do you _know_?”

“Because I talked to Beth,” he said simply.

“_That _must have been a fun conversation,” I said, and kissed him for a long time. “I just remembered,” I said when we broke apart, “Rick told me she tried to win you back while I was at work last week. I can only imagine what she tried, and what she was after.” I kissed him again, more seductively. “But I know she didn't get it.”

“Yeah, she...” He laughed faintly, but it sounded pained. “She wasn't happy. But that's why I know it's alright now.”

“So, what, she decided to give up on you, but couldn't be bothered to have her dad come get me back?”

He winced at the anger in my voice. “That would have meant admitting she knew where you were. Which I'm not even sure she did.”

I accepted that. “If you say it's safe...I trust you.” I was about to go in for another kiss, because now that I had him back in front of me, filled with as much relief as I was, it very hard to quit. But I had other responsibilities. I stopped myself.

“Listen,” I said instead. “I need to call my parents. Let them know I'm alright and home and that you would never hurt me. Talk to my kids, let _them _know. Hopefully Mom and Dad will bring the boys home shortly. But once I'm off the phone, and before they get here...” Again, I paused. “I'm going to have a hot shower. A _long_ hot shower. But then...” I pressed a hand to his chest lovingly. “...then I want to be as close to you as possible, for as long as possible.” I leaned in close enough for our lips to brush. “Does that sound alright to you?”

“Y....yes?” he answered. His voice might have made it sound like a question, but everything else about him made it a loud clear statement.

“Good,” I said, and hugged him tight one last time before I went in search of my phone.

*

I stayed in the shower for long enough to shampoo and condition _twice_, scrub all over, and stand there basking in the feeling of hot water cascading down my body as thoughts circled around inside my head. I only turned it off in the end because I was starting to worry that I'd run out of hot water. I stepped out, dried myself, wrapped a towel around me, and went over to the mirror to comb out my hair.

My children were relieved, excited, and on their way home. Jerry was relieved, excited, and a lot closer than they were. I barely had time to finish wrapping the towel before he came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me and trying to kiss my damp neck. I laughed and gave him a push. “Can I at least get my hair dry and pulled back so we don't get a big wet spot on the bed?”

“But I've been waiting all week!” He backed off, but sighed deeply and stayed in the bathroom so that I couldn't possibly miss his pouting.

I laughed again. I couldn't fault him for being impatient, honestly. “Let me at least comb it out,” I relented slightly. “If it dries like this, I'll _never _get the tangles out.” I was nearly done combing by that point, and judging from the way his eyes lit up, he knew it. As soon as I set the comb down he kissed my neck again, moving slowly around until he was facing me and our lips could meet. I pulled my towel loose while we kissed, stepping closer so that his clothes rubbed against my bare skin. The coarser fabric of his shirt, in particular, was maddeningly erotic.

We moved to the bed very quickly, and became tangled up together even quicker. After the week I'd had, he needed to do very little to create an untenable ache inside me, which only he had the proper equipment to cure. He seemed pretty eager to cure it, too. Our excitement got the better of us and the whole thing was over in maybe five minutes—but every second of it was worthwhile.

I hung onto him afterward, mindlessly stroking his back with my fingertips in between aftershocks. “I wish we could do that all day,” I sighed in contentment. “Just...do that...and then do this...and then do that some more...” I kissed the nearest square inch of his skin. “I missed you.”

“You spent the week in a room full of Jerries, and you missed _me_.”

“Yes,” I told him firmly, taking his face between my palms and making him look me in the eyes. “Because none of _them_ talked about apples when he made love to me for the first time. None of _them _took my kids out for ice cream or the park every time I got held up at work. None of _them _stood up to their ex-wife for me. None of _them _let me handle their coin collection and yes Jerry, I know they couldn't have because we were at the day care, I get that. I'm just saying, we have months of memories together. None of them called me Shorty. None of them know what I look like naked. None of them built a Lego fortress with my family. So yes, Mr. Insecure, I missed _you_.”

“That's not your new pet name for me, is it?” he asked uncertainly. “Because if it is, can I chan...”

“Oh my God.” I rolled my eyes. “Just for that, it ought to be. But no. It is not.”

“Okay.” There was a moment of happy silence before he spoke again. “How long do you think we have? I want to go again, but I also have some...questions...”

“Ditto,” I assured him.

“Oh boy.”

I laughed. “I really missed you.”

“You just said that.”

“I know.” I thought for a moment. “We probably still have forty-five minutes. Questions are probably a priority. Unless you just want me to tell the whole story from start to finish?”

“That, too.” He rolled sideways, stretching out on his back and folding his arms behind his head. “But there's two things I don't think you'd include in the story, that I need to know.”

“Oh?” I propped my head up on my hand, watching him.

Jerry nodded. “First...I know it's dumb and insecure, okay, but cut me some slack.” He took a slow breath. “Earlier I said crazy stuff would probably keep happening as long as you're with me.”

“Yeah?” I scooted closer. “And?”

He did his nervous laugh. “You were worried Beth and Rick were gonna try to take you out, I get that. But if they're not...doesn't it bother you?”

“That they're not out to get me?” I raised my eyebrows. “No, I'm pretty sure I can live with that.”

“No! Knowing you're going to get exposed to all this stuff that's just...just _out there_ because it goes along with dating me.”

“Ohhhhh.” I smiled. “Well okay, I'm not super excited for it. But the world—er, the universe—um, universes—are a crazy place. I always knew that, and I mean yeah, it's a littler crazier than I realized, but as long as no one's actively out to get me I'm okay with that. I can live with crazy. I can't live with dumping my boyfriend just because his family is nuts. That ain't me, homie.”

He shook his head in wonder. “You know, I'm pretty sure that makes _you _crazy.”

“Sure it does.” I wiggled close enough to fling my arm over his chest. “But I'm the good kind of crazy. What's the other question?”

“What do you plan on telling the police, exactly?”

*

“Aliens?” The officer looked from his notepad to me, face carefully blank.

“Aliens,” I repeated firmly.

He coughed into his hand politely, but otherwise didn't miss a beat. “Are you quite sure that's the answer you want to give, ma'am?”

I stared at him steadily. “Last summer, our planet was briefly taken over by a federation of _giant alien insects._ Spaceships aren't that uncommon even now. _I,_ on the other hand, live in a nice safe neighborhood with my kids, have a steady job, and have been in a stable, loving relationship for several months. The real question is why you jumped to any conclusion for my disappearance that _wasn't _aliens.”

The smoothness and irritation of my answer seemed to surprise him. He stared at me. “You really mean it.”

I met his gaze evenly. “It's what happened.”

“I....” He looked back down to his notepad, lost. “Excuse me a moment.” I folded my hands in my lap and waited patiently as he retreated from the room, probably to discuss my assertion with another officer. As long as I was safely home and not pressing charges against anybody there really wasn't anything they could do, but I didn't want any ambiguity remaining about my disappearance. I couldn't point a finger at the real culprits without creating all sorts of complications, but I also didn't want any lingering suspicion that I'd run off on my own or that Jerry was in any way responsible. Given that I'd spent most of the time I was gone on some trans-dimensional asteroid, blaming aliens wasn't even that far from the truth.

Jerry and my kids were waiting in the lobby of the police station right now. The boys had mostly recovered from all the distress and confusion already, and they were enjoying checking the place out. But I'd gone into a private room with the officer to (hopefully) prove I had nothing to hide and wasn't being manipulated and all that.

The officer returned after a few minutes and sat back down without comment. “Could you describe these aliens, Mrs. Thomas?”

“One was green, he looked like an anthropomorphic lizard, only with clothing and everything,” I replied calmly. “The other one was larger and seemed female. It was sort of...purple and squishy. Fishlike, in a way.”

“And what did they do with you?” If he thought I was making it up or completely crazy, he did a good job of hiding it.

“They took me to some large facility on an asteroid somewhere,” I answered, perfectly sincere. “Once I was there they mostly left me alone.” Also true. “I think they were just watching me.” Less true, but necessary. 

“They didn't....probe you or anything?”

I gave him a dead-eyed stare. “You're mocking me. This isn't the X-files. I'm not some nut raving about crop circles. I'm just a normal woman telling you I spent a week in some weird building in space being observed by benevolent aliens. Is that really _so _far-fetched, in this day and age?”

The policeman tapped his pen on the notepad, thinking. “We don't have any procedure for filing charges against aliens. You realize that?”

I almost laughed. “I do, thank you. Part of me wishes I could press charges, but they didn't really hurt me, and intergalactic politics are probably really new and really messy. I'm happy to just have it on record that no one in my life did anything wrong. If the press comes calling, I'm not the psycho who pulled a vanishing act on her family for a week, you know? Maybe you could mention that you were wrong to suspect my boyfriend. He doesn't need his name smeared either.” I waited until he looked up, and locked my gaze seriously on him. “It was aliens.”

I got the impression he was studying me, but whatever he thought, he kept it to himself. “Aliens. Understood. It'll go in the official report.”

“Thank you.” I smiled. “Are there any more details you need on anything?”

“No, I...” He flipped through pages. “I think we're all set. We appreciate you coming in today, Mrs. Thomas. Glad you made it home safe.”

“So am I,” I told him pleasantly, offering my hand to shake. “Thank you so much for your help.”


	3. THREE

Life didn't go back to normal after that. It _couldn't_. Not just because I'd been taken before sleeping with Jerry had a chance to become normal, or because “normal” had previously not included him going to an office every day. Even if I'd never spent a week away from everything, the routine we were in now would be different than it had been before I left. There were changes.

The _new_ normal meant occasionally seeing Summer or Morty on a Sunday morning, or perhaps even a weekday afternoon. It meant coming home after work to start dinner, and having Jerry arrive in dress slacks and a tie. It meant waking up to discover my four-year-old had crawled into bed with me on the wrong side of the bed, meaning he'd actually spent the night snuggling on Jerry, and was still curled up against him. It meant people recognizing me in the grocery store from time to time, because my face had been splashed all over the local paper for several days. It meant lying awake at night sometimes, worrying about all the other Jerries, wondering whether they'd ever found a way out through the kitchen. It meant actively working not to pester Morty about finding a solution for them, since I didn't want to alienate the young man when I was just getting to know him.

But if it wasn't normal, it _was _pretty darn good. I was happy. Jerry was happy. The boys were happy. The divorce went through, I rarely had to see Rick or Beth, and spring was around the corner. There weren't even any zany space adventures, despite Jerry's warnings back in January. There were adventures, sure, but most of them took place in the bedroom or on the golf course. (I was unable to conceal from him that a group of Jerries in space had taught me the fundamentals of the game, and he was indeed disappointed. However, since I was still pretty terrible at it, and since they hadn't taught me any fundamentals of sex, he got over it.)

We also had an adventure in the kitchen on one memorable night. Jerry had taken it into his head that we should have a big Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner to celebrate our four-month-anniversary. The fact that he even knew it was our four-month-anniversary was adorable, and that he wanted to celebrate such an arbitrary one was even sweeter. I baked pies. We paid Summer to watch my kids at a playland for a few hours. He bought us matching aprons and swore up and down to me that he was a great cook and routinely did stuff like this.

He made cocktails. I chopped vegetables. He prepped the turkey. I chopped more vegetables. We both got somewhat drunk, and I told him I wanted him in just the apron. The look on his face was priceless. And irresistible. I set down my knife and stepped into his space, giving him my best bedroom eyes and sliding my hands around to grab his butt. He made a cute nervous protest about that not being the most sanitary thing to do in the kitchen. I kissed him. He kissed me back. I told him again I wanted him in just the apron, and he told me only if he got me the same way. I told him this wasn't a very sanitary thing to do in the kitchen. He stepped forward, pushing closer to me, and I leaned backward.

Into the stove.

Where potatoes were boiling.

The pain was very intense and very sudden, and so was my corresponding bloodcurdling scream. Jerry backed up from me so quickly he tripped over his feet, tried to catch himself on the counter but instead whacked his hand on the edge of it, and landed on his butt. His own pathetic sound of pain was enough distract me from the stripe of agony on my back, but only for a brief moment.

“Ohmygod! Are you okay?”

“No,” he whimpered, rubbing his forearm and looking like he might cry. “Are you?”

“No,” I answered as the tears started. “M-m-my back's not on fire, is it?”

“N-no,” he told me tremulously, “but there's a mark on it.”

“Can you look?” I sniffled.

He nodded, then shook his head, still rubbing his arm. “In a minute.”

I eased myself down next to him on the floor, and we swore quietly to ourselves for a short while. I put my hand in his, and squeezed hard.

“Ow,” he said after a moment. “Stop! You're squeezing too hard! You're distracting me from the pain in my arm.”

“I'm sorry, that's a bad thing _how_?” I demanded through gritted teeth.

“Because...I..._ow_!” he responded lamely, and I started to laugh a little bit through my tears.

“What a pair,” I murmured, laughing silently to myself even as I winced. “Do you think it's bad?”

“Yes,” he snapped self-righteously, but after reflection amended “It's getting a little better. I don't think it's broken.”

I tried to loosen my grip on his hand, but it was difficult. Why did burns have to _hurt _so much? I released him, but accompanied it with a hiss. “That's good. The last thing we need is _both _of us needing medical care.” I shook my head, sighing and laughing simultaneously. “God, what a couple of idiots we are.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” Jerry retorted, but he was starting to smile. “Here, let me look.”

I turned my back to him and allowed him to gingerly pull up my shirt. I glanced over my shoulder enough that I saw the grimace of fear and disgust on his face.

“Oh come on, it can't be _that _bad,” I told him, hearing my own pitch rise a little bit.

“It's, ah...” He let my shirt fall back into place. “It'll be fine. I'll get some ice.”

“Jerry!” I protested as he started to push himself to his feet. “Seriously?”

“Uh...yeaaaaah.” He wouldn't meet my eyes.

“Come on!” I repeated again. “It can't be _that _bad! I was only touching the pan for a few seconds! What did it look like?”

He hesitated. “I can't tell. Your shirt's stuck to it.”

I took a few seconds to digest that, then hit my thigh with my fist. “_Fuck_.” Slowly, I got to my own feet. “Guess we're going to the ER, huh?”

“Nnnot necessarily,” he hedged. “Let's get some ice on it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “First, I don't even think you're supposed to put ice on a burn. Second, given the way you just cringed away from it, who's going to be treating it for me if we stay here?”

“Fine,” he said prissily. “But...injuries aren't romantic! This was supposed to be fun!”

“What are you talking about?” I said, putting my hand back in his. “Injuries are _totally _romantic. For the first few hours, anyhow. And hey.” I took his other hand, too. “I _was _having fun.”

It occurred to me that we'd both been drinking, and if we were drunk enough to lean into a stove while kissing we were probably too drunk to drive to the hospital. “Listen. Why don't we go upstairs and I'll lie down on a towel and you can soak my shirt with some nice cool water and see what happens. Maybe we can get it off enough to apply aloe and a bandage.” A smile tickled the edges of my mouth. “And then I'll be topless and badly in need of distraction. Is your hand okay now?”

The love in his eyes as he looked down at me right then bordered on adoration. It was enough to keep my happiness dominant over the pain in my back, and my smile stayed in place as he flexed his hand cautiously. “I'll have a bruise on my wrist, but it'll be fine.”

“Good.” I tipped my face up hopefully, and he kissed me—not on the mouth like I expected, but on my jaw, and then my neck, followed by the sensitive skin on my throat. It worked pretty darn well at taking my mind off the burn, actually. I shut my eyes and heard my own tiny sigh of pleasure.

“Let's go see how terrible a nurse I am,” he suggested, releasing one of my hands so we could walk toward the steps.

“I bet you're not terrible at all,” I assured him. “I bet I'll be back on my feet in no time.”

“You're on your feet now,” Jerry pointed out, a gleam in his eyes. “I'm going to get you off of them.”

“Just not onto my back,” I countered, wincing even the idea of lying down like that. Nope, not even for sex.

“Then we'll try something new,” he said, undeterred. “I'm open.”

“First aid first,” I reminded him, but it did seem like things were back on the right track.

Things only continued to improve as he successfully loosened my shirt and pulled it off the burn without me biting into my palm too hard. I directed him about where to find aloe and the super-size band-aids, and we treated the stupid thing ourselves. We were feeling very accomplished after that, and since I was also feeling very topless and vulnerable we spent some time experimenting. It was romantic _and _enjoyable. Soon I was gasping loudly in ways that had nothing to do with pain...

And then the smoke alarm went off.

We both froze, and then he pulled out and we tumbled off the bed in a messy rush.

“My turkey!” he shouted, pelting down the steps half-naked.

“No, it's the potatoes,” I shouted back, hot on his heels. “I just realized we left the pot on!”

I was right, but took no pleasure in it. Some of the potatoes were salvageable, but there was a nice layer of burnt ones crusted to the bottom of the pan, and enough smoke in the kitchen to make us cough. “Great,” Jerry muttered, his frustration resurfacing. “All we need now is for Summer and the boys to turn back up early.”

“Shut up, you'll jinx it!” I exclaimed, setting the pot carefully in the empty sink. “Let's get some clothes back on before they _do_.”

Worry registered on his face. Bad things came in threes, and after the smoke alarm neither of us wanted to tempt fate.

“Yeah, okay,” said Jerry, and then a green portal opened up in the middle of our kitchen and Rick stepped through.

I shrieked and leaned over as I tried to cover all the important bits, and Jerry let out an indignant shout. Rick walked nonchalantly to our fridge and opened the door.

“What the hell, Rick?” Jerry yelped when it became apparent he wasn't going to acknowledge either of us.

The asshole continued perusing the contents of my refrigerator. “We're out of milk. Really, you buy _that _brand of yogurt? Gross.”

“We're _naked_!” I pointed out in a shrill voice, still trying to cover myself. Why didn't I just leave the kitchen?

“Yeah.” Rick belched, pulled out a tupperware container, and examined the contents. “That doesn't seem very sanitary, you know? But I'm not here to judge.”

“You're not allowed in my _house_!” I reminded him angrily, grabbing a dishtowel to hold over my chest. “And even if you _were_, you—”

“Yeah, well, that's a tough one.” Rick put the tupperware back and pulled an almost new half-gallon of milk out. “See, I don't respect your stupid rules, because I—” He paused to burp. “--don't respect you...no offense.”

“None taken,” I said with a clenched jaw and twitching lip that he blithely ignored.

“Your son needs milk, Jerry,” he said, turning his attention back to my boyfriend. Jerry just looked resigned at this point, and wasn't even bothering to cover himself.

“They have things called stores,” I said acidly.

“Don't bother, Celia.” Despite his lack of fight, there was definite anger in Jerry's voice. “He's never paid for anything in his life. Just take the milk and get out, Rick.”

“Don't mind if I do,” Rick replied smoothly, and shot his portal gadget at our wall to create a new doorway. “Remind me never to eat at your house.”

“You'll never be _invited_!” I shot back as he stepped through.

At the same time, Jerry shouted “Oh come on! You once kept mutant bacteria in our freezer!”

He was gone before either parting shot could land. The portal closed itself and vanished, and I let the dishcloth fall from my breasts as I turned to Jerry.

We stared at each other for a minute.

“So....that's the sort of thing you warned me about eh?” I ventured at last. “The crazy stuff I have to deal with if we stay together?”

“Oh, no, I expected way worse than that,” he responded without thinking, and then immediately looked like he wanted to kick himself.

“Oh.” I said blankly. “Um. That's...good to know?”

“Yeaaaaaah.”

“Remind me to never be naked anywhere ever again.”

His expression was priceless as he tried to figure out how serious I was. “Or you could just stick to the bedroom....?”

I bit my lip, trying to conceal my smile. It failed, and I walked over to give him a big naked kitchen hug. “Or we could just stick to the bedroom,” I agreed warmly. “Oh, I'm sorry this turned into such a mess. Let's go get dressed before anything else goes wrong, okay? And then we can have a nice dinner.”

“Without potatoes,” he said woefully.

My mouth twisted into a smirk, and I jabbed him in the side with a finger. “There will _be _potatoes. God help me, Jerry, there will be potatoes.”

Finally he cracked a smile of his own. “I know I'm lucky, you know.”

“Huh?” I turned my face up to see him.

He kissed my forehead. “I said I know how lucky I am to have you.” Then he kissed my lips.

“Good,” I said softly, wriggling happily against him. “Now let's go get some clothes on.”

“Whatever you say, Shorty,” he agreed, sounding pleased and content again, and followed me up the stairs.

We were barely dressed and had just started trying to decide if any of the potatoes were edible when the kids came tearing in the front door. We looked at each other, Jerry did a very over-the-top miming of wiping sweat off his brow in relief, and we both started laughing.

As it happened, we had a very nice family dinner, and my back healed without medical intervention. A week later, when it was nothing but a small fading scar, we did find a moment alone to put on nothing but the aprons, and it was damn sexy. But we did it without any actual cooking in progress, and no alcohol in our systems.

It was probably better for that.

*

It was only a few weeks afterward that Jerry came home early from work. Not _super_ early, not enough for me to immediately draw the wrong conclusion, but early enough that he earned a weird look from me as he walked in the door.

“You're early,” I stated, walking away from the recipe I'd just opened and giving him a kiss. There was something always so delightfully 1950s about having him walk through the door wearing a tie while I was working on dinner, even if I didn't actually want to be a submissive, dress-wearing, dust-banishing housewife. “Everything okay at work?”

“Sure...Shorty,” he said, giving me a funny little smile. “I just cut out a little early because I, um, missed you.”

“Awww!” I hugged him hard. “That's so sweet. I didn't know you could get away with that!”

He hugged me back. “Once in a while. You're worth it.”

I turned my face up to him, looking for another kiss. “Thanks. You sure everything's okay though?”

He nodded, and kissed me. “Everything's great.” We stood for a moment, enjoying the proximity, and then he slowly released me. “So where are the boys?”

“Watching TV upstairs,” I told him, jerking my head toward the stairway. “Were you really expecting anything else?”

“Right.” He smiled again. “Of course.”

“Gotta relax after school somehow, right?” I smiled.

“No.” He cleared his throat. “It's not really such a bad idea, is it.”

“What, you want to go watch cartoons with them? Go for it! They'd probably be thrilled.”

“Well, but what about you?” He seemed reluctant to step away from me.

“I need to get some dinner thrown together in the slim hope that everyone eats something somewhat healthy before bed.” I laughed at my own joke. “We'll put on something the whole family can stand after we eat, and I'll be happy to curl up on you then.”

That was clearly a disappointment, though I don't know what he could have expected. “You sure you don't want to, just for a little bit?”

“No, thanks, I've seen enough of Super Why for one week,” I told him firmly. “And I'm hungry.”

He loosened his tie. “I'll help you cook, then.”

“Ugh,” I groaned aloud. “Are you sure that's a good idea, after last time?”

He flinched at the memory. “I'll....stay here and keep you company.”

“That'd be nice.” My face lit up as I returned to the kitchen. “So how was your day?”

“Oh, uh, you know. Just like every other day, pretty much. What about you?”

“The same.” I nodded. “Paperwork paperwork paperwork. Vickie was out sick, so I took all her urgent stuff, too. There were no meetings. I got a walk on my lunch break. Still waiting on that spring weather.”

Jerry laughed. “You really like your fresh air, don't you.”

“You know it! I'm powered by fresh air, sunshine, and sugar.”

“And yet you're making pasta for dinner instead of ice cream?”

I started pulling things out of the fridge. “Got to set an example for the kids now, don't we?”

He smiled very fondly at me. “I'm so glad you got back home to them. To all of us.”

“You still think about that?” I glanced over my shoulder in between pulling spices out of the cupboard.

“Well, sure.” He looked almost wounded by the question. “Don't you?”

I looked away. “Of course. But I try to stay focused on where I am now. There's a lot to enjoy right here.”

He was silent for a minute, and I looked over at him again. When I met his eyes it seemed like he was on the verge of saying something, but whatever it was, he changed his mind. “Yeah. Good point.”

“I try.” I grinned and turned one of the burners on.

“I, uh...I think I'll go say hi to the boys. Be right back.”

I had the passing “that was weird” thought, but put it down to him being tired from work and happy to see me. It must have been a long day, if he'd decided to cut out a few minutes early. I chopped some onions and tomatoes and thought idly about what Jerry's real calling _was_. He was glad to have the sales job, and he wasn't terrible at it, but it was plainly not his dream job. Despite liking the apples idea, I didn't think advertising was really it, either. He liked civics, but what did you _do _with civics? Eh, who was I kidding, I didn't use _my _degree any more than he did. And I was happy enough. We'd just enjoy the time relaxing at home that much more. Who needed some great calling in life, anyway?

I had everything in the pan and starting to bubble nicely when Jerry returned to the kitchen. I flashed him a smile. “How are they?”

“Uh, pretty into their show.” He scratched the back of his head. “That reminds me, are we seeing Morty and Summer this weekend?”

My face contorted in skepticism and amusement. “You're asking _me_?”

“Hey, cut me some slack, I had a long day.”

“Technically I think you had a short one.”

“Ha, ha.” He returned my smile with interest.

“Aw.” I stuck out my lower lip in a pout when I realized that was the extent of his retort. “You missed an opportunity at a double entendre there, dearest.”

He paused for a fraction of a second, and then I saw it dawn on him. He laughed and put his hand across his eyes. “Wow, I guess I really am tired.”

Leaving the spoon in the pot, I walked over and pecked him softly on the cheek. “In that case, I believe you are seeing your children on Sunday. I don't know what the plans are, I was going to let it be just you this time. Remember?”

He smiled weakly. “Of course!” I caressed his cheek affectionately for a moment, then went back to the stove. “So what's for dinner?”

“Spaghetti,” I said. It should have been obvious, but he'd already admitted he was tired—I wasn't going to make him feel bad.

“It smells amazing.” He walked up behind me, pulling me close in a backward hug, bringing his face down to my neck and inhaling deeply.

I giggled. “What does? Dinner, or me?”

“Both,” he said with conviction, and spun me around to face him. “I'm not sure which I want more.”

“Well, I can tell you which you're going to get first,” I told him with a laugh.

“Is that so?” He cocked one eyebrow.

“Well, mostly,” I told him, leaning upward and kissing him slowly. It was a really _nice _kiss, and I spent a while longer than I should have enjoying it, but eventually I gave him a tiny shove and turned back to my cooking. “But stop distracting me. I don't need any more burn scars.”

“What? Oh. Yeah, of course.” He stepped back without further protest, pulling up a chair at the small kitchen table. “So tell me more about your day.”

I started filling him in with all the small, boring details as I cooked, and he sprinkled little remarks and jokes to make me laugh into the conversation in the same way I sprinkled salt. It was pleasant and domestic and unremarkable. After five or ten minutes, though, he jumped up as though he'd been stung. “I just realized. I, um. I must've left—” He cleared his throat. “Left something in the car. Be right back.”

“Um...okay...” I shrugged as he retreated out the front door, and got mildly curious when he didn't return in under a minute. But before I had time to really worry, he was strolling back in. “Did you find it?”

He stopped, looking puzzled. “Find what?”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Long day, I know. Dinner will be ready in five, if you want to go tell the boys.”

“What, no hello hug first? You're just dismissing me?” he asked indignantly.

I laughed again, and went over to hug him without complaint. “You never get tired of affection, do you, Jerry.”

That made him grin, lighting up like a sunrise. “Ah, no, I do not. Come here.” He tipped my chin up and kissed me soundly, making me shiver. “I don't know what smells better, you or the food.”

I giggled again and shook my head. “You crack me up.”

“I....don't get it.” His brow furrowed, but he dismissed his doubts quickly and beamed. “But I'm happy to be of service.”

“You always are,” I told him with another quick hug. “Now go tell the boys that dinner's ready, if you don't mind.”

“Yes_sir_,” he said, snapping a smart salute, and making me laugh all over again.

*

Later the next week, Jerry turned up at my work around 11:30. It was way earlier than my usual lunch break, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him all the same. “I wondered if you wanted to go out for ice cream,” he greeted me, looking around my desk with interest.

“Oooh, you know _all _the lines,” I purred. “Do you have enough time, though?”

“You bet,” he said, miming firing a gun at me with his finger.

“Good. Let me finish logging this into the system and we can go.”

“Wow, it's...it's really that easy?”

“You bet,” I mimicked him, returning my attention to my computer screen. “Are you just really craving ice cream, or to what do I owe the honor?”

He cleared his throat. “Well. I was...er, someone at work was reading this book, and there's this ice cream scene in it, and...” He tugged at his collar and looked away.

“Hold on.” A smirk was already tugging at the corner of my smile. “_A book_? You mean _50 Shades_, right?”

“Oh, you know it.” He seemed relieved.

Sadly, yes. “I think the real question here is who on earth at your work is not only reading that crap, but sharing major scenes from it with the whole office?” I eyed him suspiciously, mostly for show. “You don't have a private reading club with Shelby, do you?”

“What? No!” Panic was written so plainly across his face, but if I knew my Jerry it did _not _mean there was a private book club. “I mean, she's the one reading it, but I, um, ah...”

I stared at him levelly, folding my arms over my chest. “No she isn't, is she. _You're_ the one reading it. And when you're supposed to be working, too! For shame!”

He did look ashamed. He also didn't contradict me. I rolled my eyes and tried not to laugh. “It's terrible, smutty writing. The ice cream scene is the last interesting sex scene, I swear.”

“So you're, hm, uh, you're not into...”

“I'm into ice cream,” I told him, standing up abruptly. “I think anything else you have to say right now would be better discussed over ice cream, don't you?” I paused. “Or is _ice cream_ in this context just your way of saying you want to sneak back home for half an hour?”

Jerry made a very small sound that said a great deal. I grinned. “Let's...start with ice cream,” he said in a strangled voice.

I grinned wider. “Cool. Who's eating it off who?”

“Uh....I...um...” He coughed _and _tugged at his tie, and I smothered a laugh. “You have no idea how hot you are when you get all awkward,” I told him quietly, slipping one hand into his as I grabbed my purse with the other. “Let's go, then.”

He seemed content to walk quietly outside, where I automatically walked to my own car. It didn't even occur to me that Jerry's would have been there, until we were about a block away from work, and when I apologized he dismissed my concerns with a flap of his hand. “I need to get gas anyway. Let's just get ice cream.”

“Right,” I told him, trying to concentrate on the road. “Now may I ask what the heck inspired you to read that crap?”

“You've read it too!” he protested. “You admitted you know it!”

I swatted the question away with a dismissive wave. “Because my friends did and I wanted in on the conversation.”

“Well,” he said, fighting for the metaphorical high ground, “_we _could have a conversation. We're friends.”

I couldn't argue with that. “Okay,” I agreed, “so how far are you into the series?”

It was actually an entertaining discussion. If I'd realized how enjoyable mocking the main characters of a crap series and debating its plot points with my boyfriend would be, maybe I'd have done it a lot sooner. We were still talking about some of the protagonist's more unfortunate phrasing choices when we arrived at Coldstone.

It was briefly put on hold as Jerry ordered a mint chocolate chip Oreo cone, and I got a bowl of cake batter mixed with cookie dough. “You know what's awesome?” I said as I handed the cashier my card. “That you love ice cream as much as I do.”

“I think it's awesome you love ice cream this much and still look like that,” he responded.

I accepted a receipt I didn't really want, and we found a table. The place was pretty much empty this time of day at this time of year, so we had our pick. We took one by the window, and I slid into the chair next to him instead of across from him. “So I'm almost scared to ask, but what do you make of all the sex stuff in the book, then?”

He shot me a sideways glance as he took a bite out of his ice cream. “I think I know what you're really asking.”

I lifted my eyebrows, patronizing, and ran my tongue over the back of my plastic spoon. “And you wanted me to ask, or you never would have brought up the book in the first place.”

“Well, it's just...” He shifted uncomfortably. “It might be something I've thought about. I spent enough time feeling like I'm _not _in charge that, well...you know. Right? You know. But I'm not Christian Grey.”

“Thank God for that.” I took another bite, less seductively. “Because I wouldn't want to date him. I don't care _how _rich he is. And it's not because of the BDSM stuff. I'd be down with that.”

“You...would?” He stopped with his cone halfway to his mouth, surprised by how blasé my answer had been.

“Heck yeah, homie, don't trip out. You know I'm for reals, I'm....” I started laughing, and had to wipe at my mouth to stop ice cream escape. “I can_not _do that the way you can. I suck. Anyway, yes. I think it sounds hot. Honestly I thought the book was pretty tame.”

“You're joking.”

I leaned over and took a bite off his ice cream, since he apparently wasn't going to. “Ooh, that's good!” I took another lick, now deliberately trying to get a rise—of some sort—out of him. “Look, Jerry, if you want me to strip down and get on my knees and do anything you tell me, I am more than willing. But if you're going to be remotely convincing as a dom, you need to be able to actually, you know...tell me what you want.”

He tugged at his collar, loosening his tie slightly. “That's...a fair point.”

I smiled sweetly. “I thought so.” I brazenly took another lick of his ice cream, stretching my tongue to a point as I did so. “So. I won't mention it again. I'll wait for _you_ to bring it up. But when you do...” I didn't finish the sentence, but I let my hand slip to his leg under the table, stopping just shy of straight-up groping him. He got the idea.

“Wow,” he said when he found his voice. “I didn't realize you'd be so...”

“Direct?” I gave him my best give-me-a-break face. “You've known me _how _long?”

He did a perfect straight face. “I was going to say _kinky_.”

“Oh!” The answer surprised me into a small fit of laughter. “Again, you've known me _how _long?”

He shrugged, now looking embarrassed. “I can still be surprised sometimes. So do I get a bite of _your _ice cream, or are you just going to keep stealing mine?”

I grinned and passed him the spoon. “This is fun. Wanna start our own private book club?”

Jerry took a huge spoonful and shut his eyes as slid his mouth over it. It shouldn't have been hot, especially since he was being _so _transparent in the attempt, but it still worked. I squirmed. “Stop it!”

“Stop _what_?” he asked smugly.

I was both aroused and amused now. “Stop trying to one-up me. Or I'll be forced to start sucking melted ice cream off your finger, and then God knows _what _you'd do to retaliate, and the next thing you know we're making out in public.”

“Public?” he asked, looking pointedly around at the empty parlor.

“In front of that poor little cashier over there,” I amended. “She probably went to school with your kids. Show some mercy.”

We grinned at each other stupidly for a minute. “So a book club, huh?” He went back to eating his ice cream like a normal person, and I followed suit. “You'd be willing to read the stuff I choose?”

“I like reading,” I reminded him. “And I like talking with you about it. So yes. On the condition that occasionally I get to choose one, too.”

“As long as it's nothing from the middle ages. I don't do Shakespeare well.”

I winced at all the problems in that statement. “I won't pick anything from a literature class. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said, eyes sparkling in a way that warmed my heart. “What would you think it if did it...say, here? Read the book on our own time, not talk about it at home, meet up once a week on lunch and discuss it then?”

“I think it's an awesome idea. As long as you're not going to spend your whole work day reading and get in trouble.” I winked.

He mimed injury. “What, you won't love me if I'm unemployed?”

I scoffed. “You were unemployed when I _met _you. You were unemployed when I _fell _for you. If I was going to lose interest over any job-related changes, it would have been when you _got _a job.” I leaned in and kissed him gently. He tasted, unsurprisingly, like mint and ice cream. I would have continued kissing him, but there was that poor cashier to think about. “That said, don't, you know, lose it on purpose. The extra income is nice.”

“I will do my best,” he said with ridiculous, goofy seriousness.

“That's all I ask,” I said, and took another bite of ice cream.

*

When Jerry came home that night, he didn't even mention our lunch date—though that wasn't _so _shocking, since we'd agreed not to discuss the reading club at home and I'd promised not to bring up BDSM unless he did first. He certainly fell on his dinner in a way that suggested he'd only had ice cream for lunch, and proceeded to spend some extra time looking over files for work on his laptop. I felt pleasantly reassured, and left him to it while I played a game of pretend with my kids.

The only down side to the whole thing, in my eyes, was that I had to reread the rest of the awful _50 Shades _series. And if it meant I got to discuss the terrible writing and the merits of masochism with Jerry, it wasn't such a high price to pay. I suspected that if he ever let go and really went for it, he could be a pretty incredible dom. Once he got into character and realized I liked ceding him that kind of control, he'd be amazing. Just knowing he thought about it—presumably had bizarre fantasies about me that he hadn't shared—filled me up with curiosity and raw desire.

In the meantime, though, our sex life was satisfying and sweet. I loved the taste and feel of him, whether we were making love or just curled up on the sofa together. I was in no hurry to fix something that wasn't broken. And the extra money we were saving up from his employment was starting to take the shape of a vacation. At first, when I'd broached the subject of going on the _Titanic 2_, he'd blanched. By then I had heard all about what a disaster his first trip on it had been—not just the rail malfunction that he'd mentioned the night he first talked about the vacation, but the way Beth had ditched him and the crazy maid who had tried to take her place. The whole thing was just appalling. But in my mind, that was all the more reason we _should _go. We both loved _Titanic_, and all those horrible memories from his failed romantic trip were a hiccup in our otherwise shared enjoyment. I wanted to correct that. We'd go on the ship together, and do all the dumb romantic activities, and it would be wonderful and amazing. Everything it _should _have been—not just because it wouldn't go wrong, but because I'd be there with him.

Eventually, he'd agreed. So we were saving up now. I was getting a period outfit made. We were getting the VIP package. We were planning to go on the anniversary of the day we'd first met. We were going to do it _right_.

We were also, because I couldn't stomach the idea of spending all that money on just us, planning a family trip to DC for sometime in late summer. Including all four children. I was really concerned about the possibility of Rick or Beth inviting themselves along as well, but it didn't seem fair _not _to bring Morty and Summer, either. Even though the nation's capital was probably a very unimpressive prospect for a couple of teenagers who regularly jumped through dimensions and planets. I thought we should invite them but make it optional, but Jerry was very insistent about getting them to come. It would be a good family experience. It would be educational. It would be fun.

Sometimes I really had to love his optimism. And who knew—maybe he'd wind up being right. At the very least, we'd make memories.

But that was all in the future. Right now, it was still spring, and we were still spending most of our energy on routine daily stuff. We took turns making dinner. I did most of the household chores, but Jerry was excellent at vacuuming and loading the dishwasher. We both had day jobs and kids to spend time with (admittedly, Jerry spent a lot more time with my kids than I did with his. But then, he _lived _with mine). We'd make love four or five nights a week, and romance consisted of staying up an hour after the kids went to bed to watch something on Netflix.

Honestly, the private book club idea was a stroke of genius. It was time for just the two of us, and even if eating ice cream and discussing books in public wasn't romantic, per se, it was great for bonding. He turned up at my work the following Thursday ready to discuss the remainder of the awful _50 Shades _series over a giant shared caramel sundae. He let me eat most of the caramel, and we discussed the ridiculous plot twists in detail. I marveled at how he had finished the books without me ever seeing him reading, and graciously allowed him to choose the selection for next week. He selected _The Fault in our Stars_, and I held my tongue with difficulty. How could he have such great taste in movies and such terrible taste in literature? He wasn't stupid, he could do better than this garbage! _But _I'd told him it was his choice, and I wasn't going to be a bitch about it. At least this time it was something I hadn't already read.

So another week went by, and it went by pleasantly, with lots of laughter and comfort and a little bit of seduction here and there. I read the book and even though it was about as not-my-cup-of-tea as I expected, I was able to find some things to enjoy about it. On Thursday, I ran my tongue around a blueberry cheesecake cone and admitted I did have a love affair with sick lit when I was about twelve. I'd read my share of books about dying teenagers, and had devoured an especially depressing series called “One Last Wish.” Jerry found it hilarious to hear I'd ever been that morbid, so I had to refresh his memory on some of my other childhood antics. We ran out of time (and ice cream) before we'd more than touched on the plot of the book, but were nonetheless happy when we parted ways for the afternoon.

We'd barely had time to select a book for the next week, so I'd throwing _The Shining_ out as an option as we were leaving. It would probably take two weeks for us to finish, with our busy schedules, which meant we could spend next week finishing up with this week's book or just talk. Besides, it was one of my favorites. I did say that if he wanted something different, I could think it over and give him the selection tonight, but he accepted readily.

And so the next Thursday, we snuggled in a booth in the ice cream parlor discussing both teenage tragedy _and _a little Stephen King. He complained about how long my choice was, and I told him he was lucky I hadn't gone with some of the _other _King novels I liked. He fed me a bite of melting death by chocolate ice cream. I protested being spoon-fed at my age by wiping my spoon on the tip of his nose. I'd intended to lick it off, but he looked so cute like that I got my phone out to take a picture instead. It didn't quite escalate to food-fight levels or anything resembling _50 Shades_, but it did get to the point where the cashier started giving us weird looks. That took it from entertaining and kinda sexy to hilarious, and we started giggling like idiots. I painted an anarchy sign on his forehead in melted ice cream, and in retaliation he drew a stick person just above the collar of my shirt.

Since we were in public and dressed in work clothes, we quickly ran out of places to smear ice cream on each other. That meant we gradually stopped laughing and grabbed a stack of napkins. At that point, I discovered a serious flaw in the use of ice cream as an art medium. “It's _sticky_!”

Jerry's face contorted in displeasure as he rubbed at his face with a napkin. “They never mentioned _that _in the book!”

“Hold on.” I went to the water fountain near the back and soaked one of the napkins. I returned to dab at his face with it. “Yeah. I'm kind of glad we never tried eating it off each other now.”

“Oh you don't call what you just did to my nose eating ice cream off me?”

I sat back and gave him a hard stare. “You are so lucky right now that I'm using a wet napkin. You realize I could have just gone the mom route and rubbed spit on your cheek with my thumb.”

“Oh, gross!” He cringed just like one of my sons would at the idea, and I chuckled.

“You don't like my spit?” I lifted my eyebrows austerely. “I think I'm offended.”

He actually _blushed_. “Aw, come on, I...uh...”

“You are so stinking cute,” I told him, and snuck in a quick kiss before picking the napkin back up. “I could just...” The perfect phrase occurred to me, and I grinned evilly. “...eat you up.”

“Ah-ha-ha,” he pretended to laugh. “Yeah you're _so _clever, here...oh. Oh!” His widened in what looked for a second like fear. “Oh....if....only you knew?”

I allowed my confusion to show on my face. “Huh? Knew what?” I leaned closer, resting my hand on top of his. “You okay?”

“Just fine!”

I had heard him say those words in that tone _so _many times, and it always meant exactly the opposite. “Jerry? What's wrong, love?”

“Heh.” He tugged at his collar, another sign he was nervous. “I, uh...that is, I was just...having some..._thoughts_.” He wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully. “About you. And ice cream. And taking a shower afterward.”

Amusement worked its way into my expression as I relaxed. “So? You're my boyfriend. We sleep together every night. You're allowed to have those thoughts. That's kind of what I was _going _for, you know?”

“Right.” He seemed to be blushing slightly again. “I just...need to walk in a minute.”

“Ohhhhh.” A huge grin of understanding stole over my face. “I guess that could be a problem.” Something still seemed off, though. “What does that have to do with me being _clever_?”

“Because! It makes you that much hotter. _Obviously_. Get with the program, Shorty.”

I relaxed fully, and sighed happily as I resumed wiping ice cream off his face. “You know, this is my favorite part of the week.”

“It is?”

So much joy and surprise in his voice! “Well sure! Isn't it yours?”

“Yeah,” he answered immediately. “Honestly? I look forward to this all week.”

“And you couldn't tell I do?”

“Well...we never talk about it at home, right?” 

No, something was still nagging at the back of my brain. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Was he anxious about something, and I was picking up on it? I couldn't really pinpoint anything _wrong_ with his behavior. And I was having fun. Hoping it was nothing, I shrugged the shapeless suspicion off.

“Of course not.” I winked at him. “You made the rules. It almost makes it feel...illicit, doesn't it. Maybe we should start meeting up for kinky sex instead of ice cream.”

“I think the other customers might take issue with that,” he joked, and I laughed.

“Yeah, I like the book club too,” I agreed. I dropped the napkin and leaned into his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him and basking in the warmth of his feelings for me. “I love you, Jerry.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured quietly. “I wish we could do this every day.”

I liked the sentiment, but the idea entertained me. “First, I'd get _soooo_ fat. And secondly, think how much money we'd blow on ice cream and books. I thought we were saving up for vacation!”

“Oh! Right. Of course. I just meant I _wish _we could.”

“Yeah,” I concurred, snuggling closer, “me too.”

*

I lay in bed that night, curled against Jerry, surrounded by dark and heat and softness, and thought about how lucky I was. He was sitting up partially, reclined against his headboard and playing a game on his tablet. I was on my side next to him, listening to the faint sounds of him and the room as I drifted in and out of a doze. It was such a good place to be, such a perfect moment. We'd had such a nice day, and I was so stupidly in love with him. My kids were snoring peacefully in their respective rooms, and the world was a good place.

Only, it wasn't. It was an insane place, and there was a lot more to it than our little safe world. I tried to forget about that, most of the time, because it was pleasant imagining things were nice and normal. But there was a group of Jerries out there somewhere, versions of my boyfriend so far away form here that I didn't even know how to count the distance, sleeping on the hard floor of a dirty room and wishing for a time when they'd had something that passed for normal. I asked Morty and Summer about it, now and then. I'd thought about going directly to Rick and asking him, but was fairly sure I'd get laughed at. (Aside from treating our home as his personal 7-11 when it suited him, he left us alone, and I should be grateful for that.) I didn't know of anything else I could do.

But there _must _be something. It nagged at me in the night, more than I'd ever admit to my own Jerry. I'd promised them, first, that I wouldn't leave without them. And I'd broken that promise in a heartbeat when rescue arrived, forgetting all my lofty revolutionary words about love. On my way out, I'd promised them I'd use my escape to help _all _of us, that I'd find a way to get them into a real world. And yes, I'd tried some, but I could have done a lot more. I hadn't wanted to rock the boat. It had been three months now. I thought about my warm bed, my clean skin, the constant assurance and affection I could feel from Jerry and the boys.

I didn't deserve any of it.

Jerry continued playing his game, humming to himself faintly as he poked the screen, completely oblivious to everything going on in my head.

“Jerry?” I ventured, and got no answer. I levered myself up on one elbow. “Jerry?”

“Hm?” His eyes remained on the screen, but at least he was starting to hear me. “Yes, Shorty?”

“You think I'm a good person, right?”

“What?” He put down the tablet and looked at me seriously. “Of course!”

“Do you...” My brow furrowed in distress. “Do you think the other versions of you think so, too?”

“Well,” he said, preening ever so slightly as he took my hand, “I like to think I know you a _little _better than they do.”

I smiled wanly and managed a nod. “You do. But I mean, I promised to help them. It was so shitty, when I was there. The way they have to live. You didn't see the way the reacted at the idea of someone caring about them. Or how hurt they were when they realized Summer and Morty weren't there for _them_. I just...isn't there _anything _we can do?”

“What do you want from me? To steal Rick's piece of crap and fly out to some other dimension and bring them all back here to live in our basement?” He wasn't irritated, exactly, but he was making a point neither of us liked.

“I know you can't,” I sighed. “And I don't want to nag Morty about it.”

“Morty?”

“He promised me he'd help,” I explained. “I'm sorry. I don't want to drag him into any crazy escapades. He gets that enough from his jackass grandpa. But I hate the thought of just leaving them there.”

Jerry put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me up against his chest. I shifted and returned the gesture, turning it into a true hug. “You can't save everyone. The fact that you're here at all is kind of a miracle. I don't want to mess it up.”

“You won't mess it up.” I kissed his neck. “_I _might. The universe might. Your crazy family, in theory, might. But not my Jerry.”

“Okay, now I _know _you be trippin.”

I laughed, kissed him again, and yawned. The drowsiness was returning, and I let myself sink into his shoulder and slide down. “I love you.”

He picked his tablet back up. “You, too. Night, Celia.”

*

_Hero!_

I woke up so abruptly in the middle of the night that I lay utterly frozen, certain something must be very wrong. I listened for an intruder, and heard only the hum of the household. The hallway light was still on. Jerry was a softly snoring lump next to me.

_Hero_, the thought jumped in my mind again, loud and forceful. What?

I tried to relax, and as I started to succeed the thought expanded. I remembered Jerry, at lunch yesterday. Remnants of ice cream drying on his cheeks, hazel eyes bright and happy. “Ah-ha-ha. You're so clever, hero.” Not “you're so clever here....oh hey, guess what else I have to say before getting all weird.” _Hero_. Like Late-entry used to call me.

My heart thumped in my chest as I replayed it in my head, trying to be sure. I _couldn't _be sure. I'd known something was off this afternoon. I knew nothing. I was jumping at shadows, because I felt guilty about not going back to rescue the other Jerries.

I turned my head and stared at the sleeping form beside me. _He'd_ know. “Jerry!” I put my hand on his shoulder and gently shook. He snorted and remained steadfastly asleep. “Jerry!” I tried again, shaking harder.

“Hm?” He turned toward me, eyes cracking open. “Wha?”

“We met at Coldstone for lunch today, right?” I whispered urgently.

“Hm?” His eyelids flickered. “Uh-huh.”

“Really?” I sagged in relief.

“Mm-hm.” He rolled back over and resumed snoring.

That was hardly solid proof, but it was enough to calm my raw nerves. I'd had a bad dream, because I was feeling guilty. Nothing more. If I was still worried in the morning, I could ask him when he was more awake. I was sure I'd get the same answer.

I fell back asleep, convinced enough that I completely forgot about it the next morning.

*

Thursday rolled around again, and I was crushed when I got a text from Jerry about an hour before lunch time, saying he was caught up in work and couldn't make it. I responded that of course I understood and would see him tonight—but silently, I was bummed. His job was important, both to our plans and his self-esteem, and I _did _understand the way an office could unexpectedly get busy and screw up your plans. I wouldn't fault him for it. But at the same time, we'd spent the last Thursday goofing off and talking about how this was the highlight of our week. It seemed a little unfair, somehow, that he'd cancel the one right after.

However, I accepted that life wasn't great at being fair, and reminded myself I was still very lucky in a lot of ways. I grabbed a granola bar from the office pantry, took a quick walk on my lunch break, and tried not to let it wreck my day. I made it through the rest of work alright and picked my boys up. Sadly, rather than cheering me up with their innocence and goofiness, their bickering and whining got on my frayed nerves. Ten minutes after we got home, they were watching TV upstairs—and I was pouring myself a strong drink as I prepped some chicken and broccoli for dinner. I downed it quickly, and as a result was already feeling more relaxed and happier when Jerry let himself in the front door.

“Honey, I'm home!” he called cheerily, which lifted my mood even more.

“Hi, you.” I walked over to greet him, reaching my hands around the back of his neck and pulling him close. He leaned down, meeting me halfway as I tipped my chin up, and kissed me eagerly. Oh, I needed this today. He deepened the kiss and I sank into it. The little sound of pleasure he made as our mouths moved with and against each other flipped a switch inside me. I pushed my body closer against him; I knew we couldn't steal away to the bedroom right now, but I wanted to at least send him the signal that I wished we could.

The kiss stopped slowly, because even when we pulled apart for breath one of us would press one more light kiss onto the other's lips. But eventually the dinner I was halfway through prepping won out over hormones in my mind, and I kept my tongue to myself. I remained hugging him for a moment, however.

“I'm happy to see you, too,” Jerry said, sounding _immensely_ pleased with himself.

I shrugged, unembarrassed. “I missed you today.”

“I missed you, too.” He tightened his arms around my waist possessively. “Sorry about our lunch plans.”

I hadn't expected him to mention that. It meant a great deal that he did, actually. “Me too. But shit happens. Not your fault.” I pulled myself reluctantly free of his embrace and went to peek at the cooking meat. “What happened, though?”

“Department meeting.” He made a face and followed me into the kitchen. “It was so lame. What's for dinner?”

“Chicken casserole. It won't be ready for a while, though, so I hope you ate _something _at lunchtime. Did they feed you in the meeting?”

“They had it catered,” he admitted. “Pizza and salad. It was alright, but...”

“But you'd rather have been with me?” I threw him a wink. “Well, that's good. It means you won't starve while I toss all this with rice and sour cream and bake it for an hour.”

“It smells amazing.” He came up behind me and kissed my neck.

I wiggled backward against him and sighed happily. “I try. How was your afternoon?”

“Well it was work, so you know, not fantastic.” He laughed lightly to himself. “What about you, Shorty?”

“Not great either,” I admitted, and turned in his arms to kiss him again. “But as previously established, I'm happy to see you.”

He grinned slyly. “Maybe you can show me _how _happy later on.”

“Oh, I'd love to,” I purred, loosening his tie for him. “The hard part is waiting for the boys to fall asleep.”

“Well you _could _just get on your knees and go down on me right here,” he suggested, his deeper voice echoing the purr in mine.

My eyebrows shot up and my lips parted in shock. “_Jerry_!” I exclaimed, more stunned than offended. “What has gotten _into _you!”

“What, don't I normally suggest that sort of thing?” That seductive, almost predatory edge was still in his voice, and it was difficult not to notice his hands sliding from the sides of my waist toward my chest.

“Not you do _not_!” I said firmly, but found myself compelled to add “But I like it.”

“Do you, now.” He moved his hands confidently under my blouse and planted a kiss on my throat.

That certainly did the trick for me. My heart thumped excitedly and my breaths came quick and short in eager little hiccups of air. “Yes,” I confirmed, “but please let me turn away from the stove. I don't need any more burns on my back.”

“More...” He sounded briefly puzzled, but then laughed. “Oh, right!” He stepped back, allowing me to move a safe distance from the stove. “That's fair.” I smiled, relieved, and he said “So how about _now_?”

“Jerry!” I was officially scandalized.

“What?” he sounded so innocent, almost plaintive, in that question.

I gave him a Look. “I am _not _blowing you in the kitchen while the kids are right upstairs watching TV.”

“Oh?” He looked wounded, but also thoughtful. “I thought you said that if I was ever man enough to tell you just what I wanted, you'd be only too happy to do it. Isn't that right?”

I blinked. “Okay first, that's not how I put it. You're manly enough already.” I smiled, stepping back into his personal space, and he smiled almost shyly back. “And yes, I did say that. Can I just add the caveat of _not while my kids are awake and in the house_, please?”

“I _suppose_ that's reasonable...” He pretended to be mulling it over. I shoved him playfully, and he laughed and grabbed me to pull me back up against him. “Tell me how much you love me, then.”

I gave him what was supposed to be a serious look, but my lips kept quirking upward on one side. “I can't tell if you're feeling extra confident or extra insecure.”

“Hm...” He considered that. “Both?” He coughed nervously into his hand. “Saying that may have used up my confidence.”

That did make a weird sort of sense. “Well, then I'll just have to restore it.” I looked up at him adoringly. “I love you, Jerry. Heart, soul, body, the whole package. Not every day since I've met you has been wonderful, but they've all been better than they would have been without you. I love being around you. The sound of your voice, the expressions you make, the color of your eyes. I love how you make me laugh. I love how we can talk about pretty much anything. I like how your mind works. I think you're amazing, and sweet, and good, and completely adorable. I'm excited for our vacation and everything in our future, but I'm also totally content to just be near you most days. I love making you see how great you are. And being with you is worth pretty much any risk.”

I stood on tip-toe, raising my face closer to his, and lowered my voice. “And so yes, that means if you want to try something new—whether that's tying me up, or whipping me, or putting me in a dog collar and having me lick your shoes, or just getting head in the kitchen—and you feel like you can ask me for it, I'll be only too happy to comply.”

“Well then,” Jerry squeaked, and I kissed him before he had to say anything else.

Eventually I stepped back. “But right now, I need to finish this casserole so that we can eat it sometime tonight.”

“I'll....just sit down for a minute,” he said weakly, and I flashed him a grin as he sank quickly into the nearest kitchen chair.

“God help me, but I love having that effect,” I admitted with a belated blush.

“You're....” He laughed nervously. “Good at it.”

I blew him a kiss and started pulling more ingredients out of the fridge.

“I think I'll go get changed,” he said after watching me for a moment. “Take it easy for a little bit.”

“Your tablet's plugged in,” I told him, knowing his definition of _take it easy_. “Bottom shelf of the bedside table.”

“Thanks,” he said, and saw himself out of the room.

One of the neighborhood kids turned up shortly after that, and my boys ran off to play. Despite them technically not being in the house anymore, I knew better than to trust the illusion of privacy; the whole gang of them might decide to return to our house at any minute. Once I got dinner in the oven, I would ordinarily have taken the time to read—but since we hadn't met up today, I didn't have a new reading assignment. I stared at the book shelf for a few minutes, finally settling on a yard sale Agatha Christie. I was a quarter of the way through it by the time I had to pull the casserole out of the oven and hunt down my children. I tried to outsource the latter task to Jerry so that I could set the table, but he was in the bathroom when I asked.

Eventually I got everyone seated around the table, and tried to pry information about their days out of them as we ate. Jerry fell on his plate in a way that made me wonder if he'd been lying about the catered lunch at work, pausing only to tell me I was an amazing cook. He hardly said a word to the boys, but when they begged him to play hide and seek after dinner he seemed happy enough to spend time with them. He always _was _good kids. I smiled fondly from my own hiding spot as I heard him pretending to hunt for us. I didn't really want any more children, but times like this my hormones screamed _I want your babies_ in his direction.

When the game ended we watched TV for a little bit and helped my oldest with his homework. I let Jerry deal with the math, even though he was no better at it than me, because he seemed so eager. When they successfully pulled off a multiplication question together, he looked as though he might die of happiness. “I remember doing this with Morty,” he said wistfully.

I nodded. “I'm glad these guys are still at the age where we can help them. Another five years and it'll probably all be over my head.”

“If they even ask,” he agreed wholeheartedly.

That was a depressing thought. After that, I was happy to snuggle up with my kids and read them a story as I put them to bed. Little moments like that needed to be treasured before my babies turned into teenagers. _You could always have another_, my treacherous hormones whispered. _We haven't even been dating a year_, I whispered back. _Calm the fuck down._

Jerry must have been thinking along somewhat similar lines, though, because the first thing he said when we were alone in bed together was “You have really great kids.”

“I know.” I stretched out and yawned. “Thanks. I love watching you with them.”

“You do?” He seemed surprised, and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

“Yes. It's one of the things I love about you.”

“Oh,” he said quietly, and then smiled. “So....are they asleep?”

“Someone's frisky today!” I remarked, smirking. “No, they are not. Keep it in your pants.”

Still smiling to himself, he grabbed his tablet and started poking around at facebook. I retrieved my Agatha Christie from downstairs, and we read in comfortable silence for a little while. After sufficient time had passed, I went and peeked at the children. They appeared to be asleep, but just to be safe I turned on the white noise machine and locked our bedroom door.

Jerry looked up in definite interest when he heard the click, and set his tablet aside when I approached his side of the bed. I knelt down beside it, sitting back on my heels, folding my hands in my lap, and keeping my back as straight as possible. I didn't think this was actually a textbook submissive pose, but they'd used it in a book I'd read, and it felt like a relaxed sort of “waiting” position. It was difficult to keep a nervous smirk off my face as I asked “So, how may I serve you?”

For a second, he looked like he couldn't breathe, and I was sure this was going to be a disaster. Then a grin started at the corner of his mouth and gradually consumed his whole face, until he looked like he'd won the lottery. “Well you can _start _by taking your clothes off,” he told me, so smoothly I almost missed the excited tremble. “Slowly.”

I swallowed against a ball of nerves in my throat and pulled my nightshirt off over my head, dragging the process out as much as possible. I glanced up as I dropped it on the floor, and the greed in his eyes was unmistakable. The cliché “cat who swallowed the canary” popped into my head, and I wondered briefly what I'd gotten myself into. But the dread that filled me was tinged with far too much desire—in a way, I _wanted _it to be something really twisted, degrading, forbidden. The suspension of not knowing what he was going to ask was the best drug I could imagine.

I got to my feet to remove my underwear, then sank back down to the same pose. Another flick of my eyes upward was enough to convince me that my earlier suspicions were right, and Jerry really _could _be good at this. “Good,” he said, almost a growl. “Don't move or speak unless I tell you to.”

“Do I need a safe word?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow as I met his eyes. I hated to break character, as it were, but I was starting to think I'd need one.

He blinked, and his voice briefly returned to its normal high-strung tone. “Of course not! I don't want to _hurt _you!”

I was almost disappointed. “Well, just to be safe, it's _red_. Anyway.” I cast my eyes downward again, hopefully looking meek and submissive. “I won't speak again without your permission.” I don't know if the long silence that followed was because he was considering what he wanted first or because he could tell I found the anxiety and suspense arousing. I suppose it didn't really matter; the only thing that mattered was the firestorm blazing inside me. By the time he said “Okay...put your hands straight above your head. And look up,” I was aching for any sort of contact or command.

Jerry slid off the bed, towering over me as he walked in a slow circle, occasionally extending a hand to brush an area of my skin. I stayed as still as I knew how, even when my muscled started to complain about holding my arms straight up. He knelt behind me, and I could feel his breath as he lifted some of my hair to his face, smelling and stroking it, before kissing the back of my neck and across my shoulders. More little fires ignited in new areas, and I had to focus very hard on my breathing to stay still and silent.

I loved it.

It was pretty evident from the front of his pajama pants that he did, too. When he gave the command—sometime later—to slide my mouth down over that evidence, I did it with fervor. He stopped me before I'd finished the job, ordering me onto my hands and knees instead. I didn't think it was because of any lack of skill on my part, but I couldn't ask because I wasn't allowed to talk. Trying to hold perfectly still while he caressed and groped me all over was an exercise in determination, and when he decided to penetrate me from behind it got that much more challenging.

_God_, I loved it. Even more, in a way, when he pulled out and directed me to clean him off with my tongue. And more when he posed me on my back on the bed and finished inside me. Containing the orgasm that wanted to rock my entire body was well nigh impossible, but he was caught up enough in the moment to overlook some movement on my part.

I loved it _so much_.

Afterward, when I was still trembling from the intensity of it, I realized that he hadn't said anything in some time. He'd rolled off of me, and was staring at the ceiling with a strange sort of expression on his face. I took a deep, steadying breath. My hips twitched. I took in another deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. Then I worked on reacquainting myself with speech.

“Jerry? Are...you okay?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn his vacant expression from the ceiling toward me. Uneasily, I shifted onto my own side, so that I could look at him. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” I repeated, uncertain now. “That's what you wanted? Was it anything like you imagined?”

“Yyyyy....yeah.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to hide my own abrupt insecurity. “Are you sure? You don't really sound that thrilled.”

He waved a hand lethargically at me. “Shush. I'm trying to make the moment last.”

“Oh.” That was reassuring. I relaxed and waited to see if he'd say anything else. Honestly, I could use the time to relax.

“I'm trying to relive it,” he said at length, sounding almost detached. “But I keep thinking of more things I want to do, too.”

“Mmm.” I let the interest stirring inside me show in that sound. “Should we take the afternoon off work tomorrow?”

He gave an obviously fake cough. “You know, I think I'm coming down with something.”

My face stretched into a silent laugh. “I'm very happy for you, but personally I'm saving my vacation days for summer. I don't think my migraine will hit until lunchtime.”

“Hm...” He let his fingers walk up my bare shoulder. “I see your point. Then maybe _I'll _use the morning to run some errands.”

“What kind of errands?”

“You'll see.” He smiled. “But I think you'll like it.”

*

Since _50 Shades of Smith _probably wouldn't have mass-market appeal, I don't need to mention all the details of the following afternoon. I will say that it pushed on some boundaries. I will say that it made me rethink some things I thought I knew. I will say that Jerry was really taking to his new role in the bedroom. And I will say that we both enjoyed ourselves immensely.

We had about half an hour between the time we finally wrapped up our little experiments and the time the boys got home from school. We spent it wrapped up together in bed, nearly wiped out by all the endorphins. “You're amazing,” he told me, radiating contentment. “I had no idea.”

“That I'd be into that sort of thing? Or are you just figuring out now that I'm amazing?” I teased.

“That you...yeah. That first thing.” He sighed happily and relaxed even further. “I never thought I could possibly wind up with a life like this.”

I snuggled against him silently, letting the pressure of my body reassure him that yes, this was real, this was us.

“Tell me something about you,” he said after a few minutes of peace. “Something I don't know yet.”

“That's tough!” I protested. “We've stayed up late _so _many nights talking. You probably know everything.”

“Nah. You already surprised me once in the last 24 hours.”

I grinned. “That's fair. But I mean, you remember our first date?” He looked briefly like a deer in the headlights, and I realized my error. “I mean the first weekend you were here. When we drank wine and watched _Titanic _and played Trivial Pursuit.”

“Wait a minute, you like _Titanic_ too?”

I rolled my eyes. “Ha, ha. Anyway, I've always sort of thought of that as our first date, but it wasn't really a date, was it. Our first _date _would be sometime after you kissed me again, I guess. And we didn't even go out that night so...jeez, what do _you _think our first date was?”

“Uh...well...you know, I guess I always kind of thought of it as that first weekend, too.”

“You're just saying that!”

“No, really,” he insisted. “Now go on, you were going to tell me something I don't know yet.”

I raked my brain, trying to think of something that had never come up once in the past year. It wasn't easy. Finally I settled on a story about one of my misadventures as a toddler, which I didn't think I'd ever recounted before. He seemed satisfied, at any rate. Then I told him it was his turn.

“M...my turn?”

I nodded.

“Oh come on, you...you already know everything, don't you?”

I kissed his arm. “Don't get all nervous on me now. You think anything you could possibly say would scare me off at this point?”

“Of course not.” He laughed nervously.

I traced my finger down the center of his chest idly. He wasn't a male model, but I loved seeing him undressed. “No dark Jerry secrets you've been keeping from me?”

I was teasing, but his reaction made me wonder if I'd hit a nerve. “No! That's crazy!”

I backed off at once. “I'm only joking, love. Just...there's nothing I _should _know, right? Nothing bad? Oh God, is it something about Rick? Or the other Jerries? I'm sorry I mentioned them the other night, did I worry you? I—”

“Celia!” He put his hands on my face, forcing me to look at him. I tamped down my rising panic. His eyes were warm and reassuring. “You didn't do anything wrong. And no, there's nothing. I'm...I'm frustrated I can't think of anything, okay? It makes me feel boring and mediocre.”

I let him kiss away the anxiety. “I would never use either of those words to describe you,” I told him firmly, and put my hand over my heart to show him. “I swear.”

He smiled. “Okay, there is _one _thing,” he admitted. “But it's stupid.”

I laughed lightly. “That's okay, I have tons of stupid stories. What is it?”  
“I keep forgetting about our plans for the weekend.”

My jaw dropped slightly. Not what I'd been expecting. “Are you _kidding_ me?” I laughed aloud. “You can't remember when you're seeing your own kids? I swear I've already told you twice, and I'm not even going!”

“This is why I didn't want to tell you I forgot,” he said sulkily. “And I only asked because I changed my mind. I want you to come.”

I shook my head in wonder. “You still have a terrible memory sometimes,” I remarked. “But since you sex me up, I'm willing to let it slide.” He stopped sulking and turned back toward me, and I elected to smile instead of rolling my eyes. “Yes, I'd love to come along tomorrow. Thanks.”

*

You'd never know, from watching Jerry greet his kids, that he'd almost forgotten all the details of when he was supposed to meet them. His grin was so broad it almost looked like it hurt, and I briefly thought I saw tears sparkling in his eyes. It may have just been the bright May sunshine, though. He pulled them both into a hug, one on each shoulder, despite their feeble teenage protests against it. “What's the matter?” he demanded when they pulled free. “Can't I be excited to see my kids?”

“Not _publicly_,” Summer retorted, but she actually looked kind of pleased.

“Yeah Dad, you're acting like you haven't seen us in forever,” Morty objected.

“Well _excuse _me,” Jerry sulked, but I could tell most of it was put on. “I _used _to see you every day.”

“Yeah but it's been, like, a year,” his daughter reminded him. “And you have Celia now?”

“Hm, true,” he conceded, slipping a possessive arm around my waist. “Speaking of which, she made an _amazing_ breakfast.” Whistling, he beckoned them into the house.

“You know you are _way _too good for him,” Summer told me as she came into the living room.

“I'm really not,” I answered, amused. “But thank you.”

“Boy, you sure seem happy today, Dad,” Morty observed.

“Why shouldn't I be?” Jerry answered cheerily, picking his late-morning cup of coffee back up. “I have great kids, a good job, a nice home, a great girlfriend...” He flashed his most charming smile and kissed my cheek. “And it's a beautiful day.”

I didn't _know _that his incredible good mood was related to our escapades yesterday, but I couldn't think of anything else that was different. It filled me up with reciprocal delight, that I might have caused this intense happiness. “I'm making waffles,” I announced, retreating to the kitchen while Jerry settled himself on the living room sofa. Summer actually went to look for my kids; since we'd had her babysit a few times, she'd struck up a rapport with them. Morty reluctantly took the seat next to his dad and started answering questions about Beth, Rick, school, and the universe.

I wasn't making just waffles. I also had eggs, bacon, and fruit salad. I enjoyed cooking for people, and breakfast was one of my favorite meals (second only to dessert). I whisked batter and listened with half an ear as Morty updated Jerry on his grades and the girl he liked at school. Summer and my kids returned to the main floor, so I could hear the boys building a block tower and Summer joining in the conversation with her family.

I was pouring batter into the waffle maker and about to flip the bacon when I felt someone walk into the kitchen behind me. A quick glance told me it was Morty, pouring himself a cup of orange juice, and I tried to think of something to say. “So how's it going?” I asked, closing the iron. Not clever or original, okay, but could be worse.

“Um...” He took a sip of juice. “Okay, I guess?”

“Save the world recently?” I tried, mostly joking.

He scratched the back of his head. “Well, no, not _really_. Not this week. We went to this tropical planet that was about to crash into the sun and saved _that_. But not Earth.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but I had no clue how to respond to that. “What'd you save it for? I wouldn't think Rick would care,” I managed after a minute.

“Oh. Uh, well, it has this really rare chemical on it that he couldn't find anywhere else.”

“Ah.” I pursed my lips. “That makes more sense.” I reminded myself that Morty was close to his grandpa, and bad-mouthing him would serve no good purpose. So instead I let out the _other _thing I wanted to say: “Hey I hate to ask, but did you ever think of a way we could go back and help out the guys on that place you rescued me from?”

“You mean Jerryboree?” He downed the rest of his juice before nodding. “Those versions of my dad who got abandoned? Yeah, I took care of that a few months ago.”

I stared at him blankly, since my brain was utterly refusing to take in what he was saying. “You what?”

He nodded again, more enthusiastically. He must have thought I was pleased. Maybe I was. I didn't know _what _to think. “Uh-huh. I brought them a meeseeks box. Oh, do you know what those are? Did Dad tell you about those?”

“Meeseeks,” I repeated, trying hard to force my brain into thinking. They'd escaped. They were safe, somewhere. Probably. This was good. This was great. But...

“Yeah,” Morty agreed. “They're these guys who live in a, well I don't think they really _live_ in the box, but you push the button on this box and they come out and do a task for you. Then they disappear. Dad used them a while back, when he was still with my mom, so I figured they'd all know what to do with it.” He shrugged.

“How do you know they didn't, I don't know, kill themselves with it?” Yes, Jerry had told me about the meeseeks. They'd gone insane and tried to kill him when they failed at their assigned task. I didn't want to think about a bunch of crazy box-aliens running amok in that place.

“Um...” Morty looked worried now. “I guess I don't? I mean, I haven't checked back.”

“Could you?” I asked, hating that my pitch rose with the question.

“Yeah, okay, I mean, sometime, sure,” he said vaguely. “But I don't quite know when I can.”

I made myself nod and smile. “I get it. Why didn't you tell me? I was lying awake just last week worrying about all those other Jerries!”

“Oh gee, I'm sorry.” He really did look sorry. “You didn't mention it, so I kind of, uh, forgot about it. We go a _lot _of places, you know?”

“I'll take your word for it,” I told him, and smacked myself in the side of the head a few times when he left the kitchen. My brain was still refusing to function after that bombshell. This should be good news, but for some reason all I could feel was a sense of looming dread.

The bacon started burning, and the fire alarm went off. I dived to open a window, and then pulled the griddle off the heat. Everything was still edible. Hell, I _liked _my bacon extra crispy. I focused on getting breakfast for six people together, but it kept nagging at me like a stranger peeking over my shoulder. I should be happy. But my gut refused to hear it. My gut was twisted up in knots that screamed _beware_.

And then, as we were finishing breakfast, I realized. It was the tiniest thing; such a small thing, to make the world shift and snap into focus the way it did. Jerry had finished his glass of water.

I always poured glasses of water to go with meals. Partly because I drank so much water, partly because I hoped the kids would drink something that wasn't juice, and partly just out of a habit from childhood. I was the only one who ever finished mine. At dinner sometimes, Jerry came close. But at breakfast, I'd never seen him take more than a few sips. Yet there it was, an empty cup, shaking my world.

Maybe he was just thirsty today. That was, technically, possible. A much more logical explanation. But the second the thought occurred to me, I knew it was the truth. I glanced at the man sitting at the table, laughing at his own lame joke, smiling at his kids, and there was no argument in my head or my heart. _That is not my Jerry_.

I put a hand on the table to steady myself; if someone had told me the earth had literally shifted under my feet at that moment, I would have believed them. It felt like someone had sprayed liquid nitrogen around my heart, and my mind was racing. How long had it been this way? How much had I overlooked or written off as something mundane? How stupid was I?

“Sweetie? Er, Shorty? You okay?”

I turned slowly to face him. “Which...” My voice came out as a croak, and I had to cough and start over. “Which one are you?”

He understood. I _knew _he understood. Sure, his brow creased in concern and confusion, but it was just a second too late, too calculated. _You fucking faker_, I thought angrily. I returned his confused look with a steely stare. “I asked, which one are you,” I repeated. The anger was giving me strength. Everything we'd done yesterday...oh God...I felt like I might throw up. Or cry. Or both.

He shook his head in denial. So innocent, so perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

Fed up with the charade, I looked over his head and addressed Morty and Summer. “Guys? I'm pretty sure we have an imposter here.”

Summer looked at me like I was crazy and/or stupid. Morty looked totally lost.

I expanded. “Morty. Can you think of any way to check whether this guy—” I jerked my head toward Jerry. “--is one of the other versions we were just talking about before breakfast? The ones you helped out?”

The lightbulb obviously went on in his head, but he didn't have a quick answer, either. I turned back to Jerry and repeated it once more, seething. “_Which. One. Are. You._”

“I'm _Jerry_,” he said defensively, holding his hands out in front of him like he thought he could ward me off. “What do you _want _from me?”

“Okay,” I replied, dripping ice from the word. “What were you wearing the last time I saw you?”

“You mean last night?” he asked, winking and trying a different tactic. “Nothing.”

I wanted to hit him in that moment. Somehow, I restrained myself. “I _mean _in that crap room with seven other versions of yourself about a trillion miles from here. Where you had no change of clothes, so I secretly identified you by what you wore.”

“Wha—” 

I grabbed him by his stupid collar, leaning over and yanking his face close to mine. “_What did you do with him? _I will _kill_ you.”

I raised a fist in what was basically an empty threat, but he cringed and shrank from it. “I don't know! I told the meeseeks to take them somewhere safe!”

That put a speed bump in my anger. “Them?”

He nodded and stared down at his plate, giving up.

“What do you mean, _them_,” I demanded. I sat back down in my chair so we were on a level, and tried to look in his face. He didn't answer. “Jerry. Who are you talking about?”

“Jerry and Jerry,” he muttered, still not meeting my eyes. I slapped him, and he grabbed his cheek and wailed like a child. I ground my teeth. “Your boyfriend, and the one who's been seeing you on Thursdays for ice cream! _He's _pretending, too. That's where I got the idea.”

_Hero_. The thought lurched back into my head from wherever it had been buried for the past week. _Thursdays._ The words rang in my brain like giant bells. _He's pretending too_. Late-entry Jerry. All those lunch dates. Not wanting to be seen reading at home, not wanting to discuss it outside of Coldstone. He'd never tried to sleep with me, though...but of course he wouldn't. This was Late-entry we were talking about. He just wanted to spend time with me. He would never have done _this_.

I felt my lip twitch. “You were pink, weren't you,” I said flatly to the man in front of me. “You had the pink polo on.”

He nodded miserably.

“Does someone want to tell me what the hell's going on?” Summer asked, sounding more irritated than anything.

Morty, apparently, _was _following along pretty well now. He extended his arm and pointed at Pink. “That's not Dad. It's Dad from another dimension. I went back to help out all those Dads who got abandoned, and I guess somehow they all wound up _here_...?” He glanced toward us, looking briefly confused again. “And I guess he used a meeseeks to kidnap our real dad?” He glanced at us again. “Um. Is that right?”

Pink continued staring at his plate uselessly. I nodded.

“What the _hell_!” he exclaimed angrily at Pink. “I—we—just ate breakfast with you! I helped you out, and you steal my dad? That's, that's not cool!”

Pushed too far, Pink went on the defensive again. “I missed you,” he shot back, as if that was an excuse. “Do you know how hard it was, knowing all of you were five minutes away and not being able to see you?” He shifted his wounded gaze to me. “And knowing there's someone who loves you, even if it's not your wife? Someone pretty, someone who kissed you before, someone who you know cares about you? And I was just supposed to sit there and pretend I didn't know? No!”

“None of the other Jerries seemed to have a problem with it,” I seethed.

“One of them did,” he repeated, nearly gloating at proving his accusers wrong. “If he hadn't tried it and done so well, I never would have.”

“So you're blaming this on him,” I observed, barely keeping my voice level. Not that I was exactly happy with Late-entry either, given that he'd been duping me for weeks, but stealing an hour of my week wasn't quite the same thing as attempting to replace my boyfriend.

“What's going on, Mom?” My oldest looked from one to the other of us, worried. Shit. How the hell did I explain this to a second grader? Especially one who had almost thought of Jerry as his dad, and had rarely seen us fight. At least his brother had wandered off from the table to play with Legos, though he was probably quietly taking in everything.

His anxiety deflated much of my anger, and I attempted a smile. “It's...confusing. Sorry, sweetie. We just found out that guy isn't the Jerry we're used to. He's a lot like him, but we want our regular Jerry back, right?”

“But how is he not Jerry? He _is _Jerry!”

Oy. How the heck did I explain this?”

“Don't worry about it, man,” Morty rescued me by saying. “He's the Jerry from another world. You know what twins are, right? It's kinda like that.”

My son gave Pink a death stare, and left the table. Yeah, he got it.

I turned my wan smile on Morty. “Thanks for that.”

“No biggie.” He shook his head. “So now what? Do we get Rick involved?”

“Ugh.” I rejected the idea. “Like he'd _care _which Jerry we have?”

“Um, yeah, no, probably not,” Morty agreed sadly.

“Are you just going to sit around discussing my fate right in front of me?” Pink demanded, bordering on hysteria now.

Summer actually rolled her eyes at him. “Are you trying to make us feel _bad _for you? You got yourself into this by being a _dick_. I barely have sympathy for my _real _dad when he gets himself into trouble, why should I care about you?”

“Because I love you, Summer! You're my little girl, I...”

“Blah blah blah,” she said, pulling out her phone and scrolling through something rather than looking at him. “Morty's right. Call Grandpa. Tell him to bring a disintegrator or something.”

Pink paled. If I hadn't been so angry, I would have felt bad for him. He was too much like my boyfriend for me _not_ to. And there was no chance I was going to let Rick hurt him. But I _was _angry, and I didn't mind letting the threat hang there.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You don't want to see Rick? Really? Start talking, then.”  
“But I don't _know _anything!” he whined piteously. Was _my _Jerry this annoyingly pathetic when he felt wronged? No...but he might come close, if he was ever treated badly enough. Beside the point, Celia, beside the point. Focus.

“You know _plenty_,” I assured him. “I might believe that you don't actually know where Jerry is right now, but don't worry. I have a _lot _of questions. So why don't you just start at the beginning.”

I could just see him considering another play for sympathy and giving up instead. “After you left, we were all really down for a while. Seeing Morty and Summer for two minutes, then having them _and _you leave...well, it was getting to us, to be honest. The fact that we knew there was some portal in the kitchens that we couldn't get to just started to get frustrating. Constant reminders that we're all basically the universe's toilet paper.”

Well, maybe he was still playing for sympathy a _little_.

“Then you turned up out of the blue and gave us the box,” he continued, looking at Morty. “We spent a while arguing about the best way to use it, but in the end it wasn't too hard. We thought about it carefully, and Jerry had what we thought was a pretty good idea. Jerry and Jerry had never seen a meeseeks box before, but the rest of us knew we had to be careful. The trick was remembering to keep the tasks simple and kind of quick. We had the box, we could press it as many times as we needed, so we took it one step at a time. We let Jerry press the button, and when the meeseeks came out he told it something like, 'there was a woman named Celia here recently, find out what dimension she was from.' And he was all, 'ooo, can do!' and an hour later he came back with some letters and numbers written on a piece of paper. Then he disappeared.”

I nodded, becoming engrossed in the story despite myself. I'd never met a meeseeks, but Jerry had told me about the disaster that resulted the last time he'd tried using one. The creatures were happy to help if the task was straightforward, but they wanted to complete it and disappear. The longer it took, the crazier they got. I was amazed the Jerries hadn't all gotten themselves killed, honestly. I wondered which of them had been the one with the winning idea. I glanced across the table. Summer had started filing her nails, but I could tell she was equally fascinated. Morty was nearly wringing his hands as he listened to how his plan to help had backfired.

“So we hit the button again,” Pink went on, allowing himself to enjoy the audience just a little bit. “And we asked that meeseeks to get us to Earth dimension K-16-R. He lead us all out the front door, navigated the weird aliens outside, and got us on some crazy inter-dimensional bus-thing that took us here. Then _he _disappeared.”

I was starting to see a pattern, for sure. I was impressed by their ingenuity. “Once we made it here, we got a little more confident.” He smiled. “We told the next meeseeks to find us a place to live, and even though we didn't have any money or credit, he got us into a couple of cheap motel rooms.”

“How?” I dared asked.

Pink shrugged. “We didn't ask. Jerry felt it was probably better not to know, and anyway, it disappeared right after giving us the room keys. We got hot showers and slept in beds and talked over what to do next. Some of us thought it was too risky, but we didn't have a lot of choices.”

“Uh-oh,” Morty muttered. I flicked my eyes that way, but then focused back on Pink. Risky? This was riveting.

“We pushed the button again, and told the next meeseeks to get us some money. Enough to live on for a while.”

“Oh _God_,” interjected Summer, catching on.

Pink nodded. “He robbed a bank about an hour away, from what we could figure out. He got shot escaping, but of course meeseeks can't die. He brought us a huge stack of fifties and twenties and stopped existing. The perfect crime.” He grinned.

That was both awful and amazing. I didn't know whether I wanted to punch him or applaud! “What'd you ask the next one, then?”

“False IDs, of course! That one took almost a whole day, I was starting to worry, but in the end he came through. Having those and the money made it pretty easy for us to rent a house close to here, and Jerry and Jerry got jobs pretty quick.”

I was flabbergasted. “So what's your name?”

He looked at me like I was stupid. “Jerry.”

“Ughhhhh, _Dad_!” Summer exclaimed, able to bear it no more. “I mean, Not-Dad! She means what's your fake ID say, idiot! Are you all supposed to be _brothers _or something?”

“According to our identification, three of us are triplets—Gary, Jack, and Jim Smith. I'm their older brother, Larry. The rest of them are supposed to be our cousins or something.”

“So...” I almost didn't want to ask. “Why _my _dimension? What was your end goal?”

“At first we were just thinking, well, you know. You and Morty tried to help us out, and you lived here, so if we ran into trouble we'd have somebody we knew here.”

I wasn't sure if he was playing for sympathy or not, but that one got to me a little bit. They hadn't been stalking me. They'd chosen this dimension because they _trusted_ me. And they _hadn't_ all descended on my doorstep. Most of them hadn't pretended to be my Jerry. They were trying to get their own lives, and for the most part they were doing a far better job than I would have expected. And I knew what he'd said earlier was true—it _would _be difficult, knowing a version of your family, not to mention a woman who cared about you, were just a hop skip and jump away.

He must have sensed some change in my mood, because he appealed to me again. “I...I know I was out of line. I'm sorry! I swear, I didn't know anything about it until last week. That he was seeing you, I mean. We all thought there hadn't been any...contact, I guess? Things were going along fine, and we still had the meeseeks box.”

“You know, I never even _thought _about putting the meeseeks to criminal use.” Summer failed to conceal her awe. “How cool is _that_.”

“That's, that's not cool!” Morty protested. “That's not cool at all! That's wrong!”

“Whatever,” his sister dismissed him. “_You're _the one who gave them the box.”

I cleared my throat. “Can we stay on topic here? You know, getting your dad back?”

“Um, yeah...yeah, good idea.” Jerry's son shot a fresh glare across the table at Pink.

“I _told _you, I don't know anything! Jerry—okay, for the sake of the discussion, _Jim—_came home last week acting...weird. _I _smelled a rat, so I tried talking to him, and eventually I got him to confide in me.”

He sounded like he was actually proud of that. Late-entry had been right when he told me to watch out for this version, jeez.

“Turns _out_,” Pink said, still preening slightly, “he'd been meeting up with you every week for the past month. He'd had the meeseeks find out this Jerry's schedule so that he could slip right in and see you without anyone noticing.” He saw my anger, but didn't understand its source. “I know! How low can you get? Anyway, he said you told him that your little _dates_ were your favorite part of the week, and he was convinced that meant you liked him better than the Jerry you already had. He was trying to think of ways to take his place permanently.”

If this revelation was supposed to somehow get me on his side, it failed. “So you decided to beat him to it?”

He started to answer and realized he'd only incriminate himself if he did.

“So you told a meeseeks to forcibly take him to an undisclosed location, then abduct _my _Jerry and take him to...the same place?”

His eyes slid sideways away from me. “Pretty much.”

“_Are _they in the same place? How careful was your wording? Are you even sure they're safe?”

“Yes! Yes! I specified safe! What do you _take _me for!”

I sighed. What I took him for was a slightly sleazier, pettier version of my boyfriend. My Jerry wasn't a killer, and Pink wasn't _that _different from him. That meant he was telling the truth. It _also _meant, however, that he would have made sure the meeseeks didn't tell him where the safe location _was._ It could be right across town, or it could be halfway across the galaxy.

“Okay,” I said, unable to stop my lip curling in distaste. “Go ahead and call in your grandpa, guys.” Pink moaned in fear, and I shot him a dirty look. “Oh shut up, I won't let him hurt you. Well...much. I don't really want to call him either, you know. So if you can think of _any _other person who stands a chance of tracking down your doppelgangers, speak up now.”

He buried his face in his hands.

Well, fuck.

*

Rick walked into our living room via green portal about two minutes after Morty called him. That have given me just enough time to shove an unbecomingly pouty Pink into the basement and get my kids engaged in a show on their tablet upstairs, but Jerry's kids acted as though this was some huge delay.

“What took you so long?” Morty fretted as the old bastard strolled in like he owned the place.

“Sorry, I was suuuuuuper busy not giving a crap,” his grandpa responded, and flopped down onto my sofa.

Summer rolled her eyes. “I heard Morty tell you it was _important_?”

Rick rolled his eyes right back. “Yeah, but there was no screaming in the background, and you said to come _here_. So I figured _important_ was some dumb trendy new word for _boring_.” She glared at him, and he sighed. “Fine, right, so what's so _important_, then?” He actually used air-quotes on the word. It made my struggle to be polite that much more difficult.

He had, however, been looking around as he talked, and he reached the proper conclusion before any of us had to say a word. “Oh, wait, your dad's not here. How'd—” He paused the sentence to burp. “--he screw up this time?”

Much as I resented the suggestion that Jerry caused all his own problems, he wasn't that far off. “A version of him from another universe kidnapped him using a meeseeks box Morty gave him. We don't know how to find him now, since the meeseeks disappeared afterward.”

He didn't ask where another version of Jerry had come from, or why he would want to kidnap himself. He didn't even ask about the meeseeks box, which judging from Morty's face was a huge relief. Instead, he unscrewed his flask, took a hit off it, and put it back before addressing us.

“Damn, I didn't think you guys were _this _stupid,” he said lazily. “You can't figure that one out yourself, really?”

“Well _Grandpa_,” Summer protested, emphasizing every other word like a teenage stereotype, “all he _told_ the meeseeks was to put Dad somewhere _safe_. That could be the basement next _door_, or it could be on another _planet_. Did you, like, install some special _chip_ in Dad or something? I _know _you do stuff like that.”

“Sure, for you guys,” he admitted freely, “but why would I c—_burp—_care about tracking _Jerry? _I don't even want him in the first place.”

“Okay,” Morty said defiantly, folding his arms, “so, so if we're so dumb, where is he, then?”

“_Duh_,” Rick said, somehow making it sound like a word an adult man would say. “He's at Jerryboree.”

“Oh come on, you can't know that!” I exclaimed.

At the same time, Morty objected “How would it even get him there?”

“Uh, probably with my spare portal gun, which conv—_belch—_eniently went missing two days ago?”

“Jesus, Grandpa, don't you ever lock up your stuff?”

“_No, _Summer,” Rick retorted, “because there's usually not anyone stupid enough to mess with it since your dad moved out.” He turned his attention to me. “The meeseeks aren't very, uh, _creative_. If all you told it was to keep Jerry someplace safe he's not gonna come back from, that's the easy answer. Which means it's the right one.”

“_We_ didn't tell it anything,” I couldn't help contradicting him. “I've never even seen one.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He waved this aside. “So I bet now you want me to help you get him _back_, right?”

I bit back hard on my pride. “Yes, please.”

He sighed exaggeratedly and got to his feet. “Are you sure? You don't just want to keep whatever version of him is floating around this universe?”

He looked from me to Summer to Morty. All of us shook our heads with varying degrees on conviction. “Fine,” he agreed, as if he were doing us some huge favor. “Let's go.” He fired the portal gun again, and I remembered something important.

“My kids are still upstairs! Do I need to find a babysitter, or...?”

He shook head, dismissing my concerns. “We'll be in and out in five minutes max.”

He barely gave me time to shout up the stairs that I was running out _really _quickly and to call Jill if there was an emergency.” Not quite knowing what to expect, I jumped through the portal after them.

Jumping, of course, was a mistake. I landed on my ass on the other side, and thought irritably about how much I hated this place as I got back to my feet. Rick was laughing openly, and Morty and Summer were doing a poor job of concealing their amusement. We were back in the stupid lobby. It was like a dream. It was the same alien guy at the reception desk, and even on his reptilian features I could see the recognition flash in his face. I waved, awkwardly. He turned an alien glare on Rick.

“Come on,” I said to Morty and Summer, leaving Rick to deal with reception. “Do you remember the way to the room you found _me _in, last time?”

Morty nodded with surprising confidence, and his sister and I followed him down the hallway to the left. I could just hear the receptionist telling Rick “There's no way we're taking _her_ again!” before we were out of range. Sadly, the dream of ditching him didn't last; barely five seconds later, he caught up to us. Out of curiosity, I asked what he'd told the receptionist.

He cast me a sideways glance. “That I didn't have time to listen to their dumb rules,” he stated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You look like you're headed someplace special. Thought you didn't know where he was.”

“I didn't. But if he's here, then I know where _in _here.” To tell the truth, I wasn't sure whether I'd find Jerry in the room I remembered. But I'd have bet even money that's where Late-entry was. If I got to have a talk with him about lying before we went to hunt down Jerry, that was fine by me. If Jerry was actually _with_ him, so much the better. It didn't sound like they'd been brought here together, so I wasn't going to count on it, but if they were together then they'd be looking after each other.

…well, Late-entry would be looking after my Jerry, anyway.

All of this had turned into a mess so quickly, I was still grappling with all the facts. Part of me felt bad for Pink, but most of me felt violated and betrayed. Most of me was _not _mad at Late-entry, despite the fact that he'd been deceiving me for a month; I didn't like having my brain played with, and I certainly didn't like him considering taking Jerry's place, but he'd never really pushed his advantage and our book club _was _the highlight of my week lately. A lot of me was confused because now, knowing they'd been two different Jerries, I had to admit I really was in love with both of them. All of me was worried about _my_ Jerry.

After a few minutes of walking, we came to the room I remembered. It was so strange, seeing it again, and made even stranger by how empty it was. I'd never seen it unoccupied before.

We stood there in the doorway like a group of morons, staring at the emptiness, and then I moved forward to check behind the table and where the vending machine obscured my view. “Dad?” Morty called tentatively.

Rick burped loudly, demonstrating his complete lack of concern. “Looks like you're wrong,” he said to me. “No one's here.”

I bit off a cry of frustration and paced the room, looking for some sign. They _had _to be here! Unless _Rick _was wrong, in which case they could be anywhere. _Literally _anywhere. Why couldn't Pink have just taken care of it himself? I knew how Jerry thought. He'd have left them handcuffed in some hotel bathroom somewhere. They'd done it to Jack in _Titantic_ and Mardukas in _Midnight Run_, so of course it'd be good enough for Jerry Smith.

That was the key: try to think like Jerry. Say Rick was right, and he'd gotten dumped here by a meeseeks. What would he do first? Complain and explore. What would he do after a day? Sit around feeling sorry for himself. What would he be doing by now? He'd either still be in throws of depression—in which case he'd be here—or he'd be trying to distract himself from his depression.

“We should go check the golf course,” I announced aloud. “Does anyone want to wait here in case he comes back?”

“I will,” said a voice from behind Rick, and I spun around.

It wasn't Jerry, except in the way all of them were Jerry. I knew exactly which one he was. He stepped between Rick and Morty and I hurried over without knowing whether I was going to slap him or kiss him. The guarded look on his face said he didn't know, either.

I flung my arms around him, held onto him tight, and said nothing.

A tiny part of me, for half a second, considered telling everyone else that this was _our _Jerry. I was the one who lived with him every day, and he'd been able to fool even me. If I said this was him, they'd accept it. The second the thought occurred I knew I couldn't _do _it. We'd both hate ourselves for even seriously contemplating it. So I didn't even breathe the thought. I just hugged him.

Late-entry laughed very nervously. “I thought you'd be mad.”

“Oh, I am,” I said into his chest. “But not as mad as I probably should be.” It hurt to look up at him, but I did it anyway. He stared at me. I shrugged. “I'm glad you're safe. Let's find Jerry and get you out of here.”

He nodded to that before giving a polite nod of acknowledgment to the rest of the...team, I suppose. “Morty, Summer. Thanks for coming for...not me, I know.” He sighed, but didn't wallow in it much. “But you came to the rescue anyway. Three times now, Morty. I'm proud of you.” He gave him an uncertain smile, and his face lit up when Morty returned it. “....Rick,” he greeted our version of his father-in-law at last.

“Jerry,” Rick answered with distaste.

That was probably enough loving reunion. Before either of them could say anything rude, I smiled tightly. “So you know our Jerry's here, too?” I asked Late-entry.

He nodded. “We woke up together. In the main room.”

“Woke up?” Summer interjected. “So you don't remember coming here?”

“No,” he answered doubtfully. “I...think we got drugged? I just went to bed as usual, and woke up here.” He didn't say the words _just like last time_, but I could read them in his face. I took his hand and squeezed it, trying to provide a modicum of support. “How did you know?” he asked, turning back to me.

“We had to call in Rick. We didn't know _where _you might be, honestly.” I hated admitting that.

“When all else fails, call in the genius,” Rick agreed, sounding bored. “So are you going to go find your guy, or what? This place is terrible. I can, I can _smell _the Jerry.”

“What do we smell like?” Late-entry couldn't resist taking the bait.

“Desperation and mediocrity,” he said blithely, as if those were real smells.

Late-entry's face twitched in irritation, and he turned back to me. “You know the worst part about being here?”

“No,” I asked, still holding onto his hand. “What's that?”

“I even started to miss _him _after a while.” His delivery was so filled with disgust, I had to laugh. His eyes smiled a little bit after that. “How did you know to call Rick at all? I mean, you _had _a Jerry, didn't you?”

Ah, so he'd figured that out. Not surprising, really. He must have felt so betrayed, waking up and realizing what Pink had done. “Morty finally told me he'd gone back and given you guys the box,” I admitted. Morty gave an embarrassed little wave and half-nod. “Once I realized you weren't _here _anymore, the little differences were more glaring. The imposter told me the rest.” I paused only briefly; I knew everyone else was waiting on me to go find Jerry, but I had to know. “Why didn't you just tell me it was you? I would have made time to see you! I would have made _more _time.”

He was already shaking his head before I finished speaking. “If you'd known it was me, you would have acted differently. I, ah. I wanted...I wanted to see what it was like to be him. Just a little.”

I squeezed his hand again, and when he met my eyes I offered a small smile. “Yeah. I get it.”

Rick coughed pointedly. I rolled my eyes. “Time to go find K-16-R. You really want to stay, and keep him here if he comes back?”

“Um...yeah.” He averted his eyes from mine. “I don't think I, uh, belong there. For that reunion.” He hesitated, then added “You were right, you know. He _is _golfing.”

“Hole in one,” I joked, releasing his hand to mime a golf swing. He barely cracked a smile. “We'll be back,” I told him, praying I'd be able to keep that promise this time. 

“Great,” Summer mumbled as we headed back down the hallway. “Now all we have to do is navigate an entire golf course.”

Technically, it was only nine holes, not an entire golf course. Still pretty impressive, I suppose. We started at the ninth hole and worked our way backward. Coming around a corner made of trees (fake, probably?), I heard swearing in a familiar voice. We'd already passed so many Jerries, that didn't really mean anything to me. But when I saw Jerry in his work clothes, tie loosened and sleeves pushed up, trying futilely to get his ball out of a sand trap, my heart surged.

“Dammit!” he was saying, oblivious to our presence. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” He swung again, and even from a distance I could see that the ball only hopped as sand sprayed.

“Jerry!” I called. His reaction would tell me if I'd got it right.

He looked up, and his eyes widened. I didn't hear his answer, but I saw his lips form my name. He dropped the club. I took off at a run toward him.

He caught me when I reached him, but I'd been running fast enough that the force knocked us both over backward into the sand. I laughed and lay on him in the sand, securing my arms around him. “Jerry,” I sighed in relief. “_My _Jerry. I'm so sorry, love.”

“What do _you _have to be sorry for?” he asked, puzzled.

“That it took me so long to notice it wasn't you,” I said, hugging him tighter.

He looked over my shoulder, saw that his family had caught up, and shifted me off so that he could sit up. “Aw, you guys _do _care.” He smiled at them—even Rick—and got to his feet.

I followed suit. “I guess sometimes it pays to have a genius asshole who raids your fridge from time to time?”

Rick actually almost smiled. “Yeah. And now you owe me.”

I looked over at Jerry. “Well, we're fucked, then.” It was much easier to joke about things, now that I had him back at my side. “Ready to go home?”

“Can I finish this game first?”

I stared at him. “You're serious.”

“Yeah! Before this trap, I was under par. You should've seen it!”

“Actually, I left the kids alone in the house with the your evil doppelganger in the basement. So I'm afraid, love, I'm gonna go with _no_.”

“Aww.” His shoulders slumped slightly. “Okay.”

Morty smiled. “It's good to have you back, Dad.”

*

I had to sell Rick a few more favors to avoid leaving Late-entry behind. God only know what he'd do with my favors—it wasn't like I had anything besides milk that he'd really _want_. But inside of ten minutes we were back home. My kids were slightly worried because we'd been gone longer than I'd said, but they hadn't yet panicked and gone looking for help. Pink was still in the basement where we'd left him, and wasn't overly keen on coming back up to talk to everyone. But even though part of me just wanted to send everyone home and spend the rest of my Sunday pretending none of it had happened, it wasn't practical.

First, now that Rick knew there were other Jerries in the vicinity, I didn't totally trust him to leave them to their own devices. Especially now that we'd called him in for help once. Secondly, I wasn't sure _I _trusted leaving them to their own devices. Maybe it was as simple as just taking the meeseeks box away, but it seemed intelligent to sit everyone down and have a civilized discussion about how to proceed.

Civilized, ha.

When Pink came into the living room, Late-entry looked from him to me and back again. “Tell me I'm wrong,” he nearly begged me. He didn't need to expand on that for me to understand.

I couldn't, and hated that.

He stepped closer to me. Pink sat down on the sofa and pretended not to notice. “Tell me you didn't,” he repeated softly. “It'd be my fault if you did. I told him the, ah. The things we talked about. At Coldstones.”

I couldn't meet his eyes. Hearing him take responsibility didn't make it any less my fault. I should have known I had the wrong guy. I should have _known_.

“What are you talking about?” Jerry asked, concern starting to bloom on his face.

What I think was a ruthless smile for Late-entry looked more like he had a toothache. “That worthless excuse for a Jerry raped your girlfriend.”

Up until then, Pink had done a pretty good job of pretending he didn't hear us. But his head snapped up at that. “It wasn't rape,” he yelped. “She was into it!”

Late-entry glared at him. “She thought you were Jerry!”

“I _am _Jerry!”

“_Her _Jerry!”

“What difference does it make?” he demanded, crossing his arms defiantly. Jerry's head was turning back and forth between the two of them like a tennis match. Morty and Summer looked profoundly uncomfortable. I wanted to crawl under a rug. “The fact that she didn't notice just proves she'd be fine with any one of us! Why shouldn't it be me?” When Late-entry didn't have an immediate answer, he smirked. “Oh, right. Because it was supposed to be _you_. Right?”

“I—I—” Late-entry was actually inarticulate with rage.

I put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him, and felt Jerry's eyes on me as I did. Could this _be _any more awkward? “He's trying to get a rise out of you,” I said soothingly. “He's a selfish ass.” I glanced back to Jerry, and slipped my hand into his. “I'm okay,” I assured him. “I just hope you can forgive me.”

He nodded, looking close to tears. I leaned in closer. “We'll talk later,” I promised. “Let's get this sorted out first.”

Late-entry successfully restrained his anger, and turned to Rick instead. “So what happens now?”

“Oh, what a surprise, you want _me _to fix your mess. What do _you _think, Morty?”

“What? Oh, me? I, um...”

“Well, since you stole the meeseeks box for them in the first place and all, I figure you're just full of good ideas on helping out your dad.”

“”Hey, that's bullshit,” I snapped, feeling bad about the way he was putting Morty on the spot. “If _you _hadn't stuck me at Jerryboree in the first place, he wouldn't have ever met those Jerries and thought to help them.”

“Which I would never have done if _Jerry_ hadn't gotten all confident and gotten under Beth's skin.”

“So this is _my _fault?” Jerry demanded, wounded.

“Yep, it's your own fault you got kidnapped,” Rick said blithely. I couldn't tell if he actually believed it, or if he just liked getting under Jerry's skin. “I _guess _I could fix it. But it's gonna be a pain in the ass. And you're gonna have to trust me.”

I looked at Jerry nervously. His eyes reflected some of my concern. My eyes moved on to Late-entry and Pink, who both looked terrified. If we accepted help from Jerry's former father-in-law on this, we were gambling with their lives. “Can I talk to you for a second?” I whispered to my boyfriend.

“For fuck's sake,” said Rick, who had heard me, “I'm not a stone-cold killer.” He burped. “Most of the time. Right, Morty? Summer?”

“Um....” Morty clearly would rather not answer.

Summer, surprisingly, agreed at once. “Right. I mean, okay, he's not _nice _most of the time, and sure, he takes crazy risks a lot. But I've never seen him murder someone for no reason.” She cocked an eyebrow. “I mean, that's what you think, right? That he's gonna off those two?”

“Summer!” Jerry exclaimed, appalled by how baldly she'd stated our concern.

I didn't even blink. “Yes.”

“Well, he won't,” she told me confidently. “I mean, yeah, it'd be a lot less work just to wipe them out than to find them all new homes, and yeah he's a great liar. And yeah, I've seen him kill lots of parasites, which isn't that far off from these guys...no offense, Dad.”

“None...taken?” He responded doubtfully.

“Hey, don't go out of your way to convince these two morons,” Rick told them, getting to his feet. “Let all those Jerries set up camp right here. You're fine with sharing your girlfriend with all them, more power to you.”

“Wow, Dad, I didn't know you were that progressive,” Morty squeaked.

Jerry didn't _look _progressive. He looked like he was imagining that particular future and then imagining cutting it into tiny pieces, lighting them on fire, and dumping them down a very deep well.

“Don't we get any say in this?” Late-entry asked. His tone wasn't deferential, but it wasn't quite accusatory, either.

“No,” Jerry said abruptly. “This is _our _universe. No one made you come here. Go get your own.”

I shut my eyes. _That is so petty, love_, I thought silently. _And it oversimplifies so much_. But I got where he was coming from—I couldn't live with that future, either. And even if the others swore to leave us alone forevermore, having them right across town would make me permanently paranoid.

Summer must have seen some of what I was thinking, because she rolled her eyes. “I'll make sure he doesn't kill them, okay? If you're _that _worried. Morty and I will. So chill.”

“Yeah,” Morty chipped in, “don't, don't even trip. I saved these guys once, I'm not gonna let Rick hurt them now. And _he _owes _me._” He shot a pointed look at his grandfather, who rolled his eyes.

I nodded slowly. It had to be this way. I cast an apologetic half-smile Pink's way, and went over to give Late-entry a hug. “Make him find you a universe where I'm alive and available,” I told him firmly. “There's got to be one out there somewhere. Don't settle.” For the second time, I kissed him goodbye—this time, on the cheek. Then I retreated to stand by my Jerry. For better or worse, he was always going to be my Jerry.

“Alright,” Rick groaned, “let's go, kids. You're helping me do the research on this one.” Morty and Summer moved to follow him. “You too,” he told Pink and Late-entry, waving his portal gun at them. I expected them to say something—some objection, some parting words, I don't know—but they went through the green glowing doorway silently. I could feel Late-entry's eyes on me until the last second, and held off my tears until everyone was gone.

Then I threw myself into Jerry's arms and burst into tears.

*

“Oh, my God.” I slipped my hand into Jerry's, staring around me in awe. “I knew it'd be amazing. I mean, I saw the movie! But _being _here....you really don't understand the scope of it, do you? Unless you're standing on the deck.”

He tipped his hat slightly forward, love shining in his eyes. “Wanna go to a _real_ party?”

“I, uh...” One side of my mouth pulled upward, and I tried to gracefully brush a strand of loose hair back behind my ear. “You know that line doesn't work right here, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the deck. “But I had to say _something _from the movie.”

“How about, well, we've walked about a mile around this boat deck, chewed over the weather and how I grew up...”

Jerry turned and put his arms around my corseted waist. “But we haven't.”

“Ugh,” I laughed. “Fair enough. So are we getting in line for the bow now, or do you want to go back to the cabin for a while and have our own little party?”

“We paid enough for that dress,” he pointed out, “you ought to spend a _little _time in it.”

“But it's _tight_,” I whined playfully.

“But you look beautiful.” He pulled me closer, kissing my neck. “Let's get in line. Please? I want to do it right this time.”

“You're already doing it right.” I rested my head against his chest. “You're with me, aren't you?”

“I don't know, am I?” He winked. “You could be my other girlfriend from a different dimension.”

I rolled my eyes at him, and pushed my sleeve up to my elbow. A small red apple tattoo on the inside of my wrist came into view. “And you know it's me anyhow.” Immaturely, I stuck out my tongue. “Your turn.”

“Fine, but you're rebuttoning my cuffs.” He rolled sleeve up, too, displaying his own little apple.

I smiled as I helped him refasten it. “You think it's lame that we have matching tattoos?”

“_Lame_? Hell to the _no_, Shorty. Tattoos are _dope_.”

Laughing, I slipped my hand back in his. “Let's go get in line, Rose. I can't wait to stand behind you as you say you're flying.”

He put his hands on his hips. It was ridiculous. “You did _not _just call me Rose.”

“Well _I'm_ not getting up in any position where I might fall way the hell down and land in the freezing water. I'll stay safely in Jack's spot, thank you very much.”

“Oh come on, don't you trust me?”

“Of course I do. I just hate heights.”

“Your eyes will be closed.”

“Fine,” I sighed. I'd always intended to let him win on this one, really. “Lead on, Jack.”

He bowed deeply and ushered me forward. “My pleasure, Rose.”

Happily, I put my hand back in his as we walked toward the bow of the ship. “This has been a hell of a year.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing,” he observed.

“Nah.” I grinned. “Crazy. But good.”

“Ah.” I saw his shoulders sag slightly in relief. “Good.”

I squeezed his hand. “I love you, you know.”

He nodded, and for those seconds I was far more interested in his face than the amazing replica ship around us. “I, uh. Love you, too.”

EPILOGUE

_Earth, Dimension Zeta 684_

The doorbell pulled me away from my kids. I knew I spent too much time with them—the older they got, the more they wanted to hang out with their friends instead of me. I kept using the accident as an excuse to not get out and date, but the truth was that I'd never been that good at meeting people. If there had been any single dads floating around my circles, I suppose we might have hit it off, but they were surprisingly hard to come by.

At any rate, my kids could have cared less about me going to answer the door. Not that they didn't love me, but....you know. If I wasn't going find a boyfriend, I needed to find a new hobby or something. I wondered who it could be. Probably some salesman, or the mother of my oldest son's buddy coming to collect him. Technically it could be the mail, but I didn't think I'd ordered anything....

I opened the door, and stared rather blankly at the man standing on my doorstep. He was cute, in a generic sort of way. Close to my own age. Tall, comfortable build, unruly brown hair worn short. His smile was nervous, but also automatically endearing. I found myself smiling back as I wondered what he was selling. “Hi.”

He exhaled sharply, a murmur that sounded something like “Hero.” Then he snapped his mouth shut, pulled at his collar, and cleared his throat. Definitely seemed nervous, though I couldn't fathom why. I softened my smile and ducked my head, trying to look encouraging. “Can I help you?”

“I...uh, I hope so.” He stuck his hand out awkwardly. “I'm Jerry.”

“Jerry,” I repeated, and it was like a tiny guitar started plucking strings inside me. “I'm Celia. Do you want to come in?”


End file.
